London: The British financial services
regulator on Thursday fined Canada's Toronto Dominion Bank a
whopping 7 million pounds for failures related to the pricing
of its financial products.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) imposed the fine
on the Canadian bank's London branch for repeated systems and
controls failings around the pricing of sophisticated
financial products.
"This is the bank's second fine for systems and controls
failings and the fourth largest levied by the FSA," the
regulator said in a statement.
The breaches relate to pricing issues that were uncovered
on a proprietary trader's books within Toronto Dominion's
Credit Products Group.
According to the statement, the branch did not have
adequate controls in place which could have detected the
pricing issues.
Without the discount, the fine would have been 10 million
pounds.
In November 2007, Toronto Dominion was fined 490,000
pounds by the FSA. The same was imposed, when a fixed income
trader, Simon Brignall, attributed false values to his trading
positions and created fictitious trades to hide significant
losses on his book.
"This is one of our largest fines and it underlines the
seriousness with which the FSA views repeat offences," FSA
director of enforcement and financial crime Margaret Cole
said.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, December 17, 2009, 22:37