Latour Trading, a high-frequency trader, will pay a total of $8 million to settle charges that it sent millions of orders to U.S. exchanges that did not comply with SEC market structure rules.
Latour violated Regulation NMS because its parent, Tower Research Capital, in 2011 made a coding change in shared electronic trading infrastructure. That change inserted an error into the shared infrastructure that led to the execution of 12.6 million orders for more than 4.6 billion shares at prices worse than the best available, giving Latour excessive trading profits and rebates from exchanges for almost four years, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission ruling.
Regulation NMS requires trades to be executed at the best price available.
The SEC said Latour corrected many of the issues by October 2012 and addressed the rest by August 2014.
Latour consented to the SEC ruling but neither admitted nor denied the charges, according to the agency. Of the $8 million Latour agreed to pay, $5 million is a civil penalty and $3 million in repayment to clients.
Latour in September 2014 agreed to pay a $16 million penalty to settle SEC charges that it didn't hold enough capital to support its high-frequency trading.
Efforts to reach Latour and Tower Research were unsuccessful.
