SWX Swiss Exchange has fined French bank Société Générale for misuse of trader identification numbers to access the exchange.
The sanction commission of SWX imposed a penalty of SFr30,000 ($28,823). SocGen will also be required to pay SFr10,000 for the cost of proceedings.
All traders who access SWX must be registered, and the exchange assigns personal identification numbers (PINs) to each registered trader. If a registered trader acts as a deputy for another, both traders must keep a log of this.
SocGen auditors found that, in July 2006, when five traders were absent, entries were made on the exchange system using the absent traders’ PINs. In four of these cases, although the entries were made by registered traders, a log was not kept. In the fifth case, an entry was made by an unregistered trader.
SWX says it imposed a fine of this size because SocGen had already been reprimanded in 2006 for misusing trader PINs, but in spite of this had not implemented the necessary measures.