I had to laugh at the Fine... 40,000 LOL.
Goldman Sachs Fined by ICE Exchange for ‘Disorderly’ Trading
By Lananh Nguyen
June 20 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was fined
25,000 pounds ($40,000) by the ICE Futures Europe exchange for
“disorderly” oil trading, the London-based exchange said.
An ICE committee that investigated the trades “found no
evidence of intentional manipulation of the market; nevertheless
it considered the breach to be of a serious nature,” according
to an ICE circular on its website dated June 17.
Kelly Loeffler, Atlanta-based spokeswoman for
IntercontinentalExchange Inc., which owns ICE Futures Europe,
said the company doesn’t comment on investigations. A London-
based spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs, Joanna Carss, couldn’t
immediately comment on the matter.
The penalty relates to “price spikes” on the April 2011
Brent-WTI crude spread which occurred on Jan. 28 from 2:26 to
2:31 p.m. U.K. time, according to the circular. The moves were
found to be the result of several large market orders placed in
quick succession by a Goldman trader, ICE said.
The ICE committee “considered the behavior of Goldman
Sachs and its client to be a clear case of disorderly trading,
in that the distorting price impact of the placement of such
large orders in close proximity was not considered.”
The spread between the April 2011 contracts narrowed to
$7.49 a barrel on Jan. 28, having opened at $9.41 a barrel and
closed at $7.87 a barrel, according to data from ICE. The
difference between the two front-month global benchmarks was
$19.20 a barrel as of 3:42 p.m. today in London.