The City regulator had brought in charges of misreporting millions of transactions over a decade against US bank Goldman Sachs and following which the investment bank has been fined £34.4 million.

The Financial Conduct Authority of the United Kingdom has severely criticised the US investment bank for “serious and prolonged failures” of disclosure related issues at its London-based international arm following emergence of reports that the bank had not made accurate and timely disclosures and reporting of more than 213 million transactions between November 2007 and March 2017.

Goldman Sachs “failed to take reasonable care to organise and control its affairs responsibly and effectively” in relation to those transactions, the FCA also said.

The fine imposes on Goldman is the largest to date imposed by the FCA in relation to charges of breaches of transaction reporting.

The role and the significance of it obtaining accurate data from the firms it regulates were stressed by the watchdog. It further also said that the watchdog is able to better identify potential market abuse and combat crime if the transaction reports were accurate and timely.

“The failings in this case demonstrate a failure over an extended period to manage and test controls that are vitally important to the integrity of our markets. These were serious and prolonged failures. We expect all firms will take this opportunity to ensure they can fully detail their activity and are regularly checking their systems so any problems are detected and remedied promptly, unlike in this case,” said Mark Steward, the regulator’s executive director of enforcement and market oversight.

The watchdog said that it had initially decided to impose a fine of £49 million on Goldman but was later awarded a 30 per cent “discount” on the fine because the bank gave assurance to resolve the issues.

“We are pleased to have resolved this legacy matter. We dealt with the issues proactively at the time and have made significant investments across the period to develop and enhance our reporting procedures,” said the Wall Street bank in a statement.

Goldman Sachs is not the only bank to be fined by the FCA for issues related to violating of transaction reporting. Last week, the watchdog also imposed a fine of £27.6 million on UBS for similar breaches done by it between 2007 and 2017.

The FCA had earlier identified twelve other firms for breach of those regulations which include Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and Commerzbank.

(Adapted from TheGuardian.com)