Goldman Sachs must pay $1.8 million for reporting failures: FINRA

By Suzanne Barlyn

(Reuters) - A Goldman Sachs Group Inc <GS.N> unit must pay $1.8 million for not reporting "substantial" details about its alternative trading system orders to a system that tracks that information, and also for other lapses, Wall Street's industry-funded watchdog said.

Goldman Sachs' clearing and execution unit failed to send "a substantial number" of details about orders to a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority auditing system during a seven-year period, the regulator said on Monday.

Alternative trading systems, also known as "dark pools," are broker-run trading venues that let investors trade shares anonymously and only make trading data available afterwards, reducing the chance of information leaking about trade orders.

Goldman Sachs, in reaching the civil settlement with FINRA, neither admitted to nor denied wrongdoing.

“We’re pleased to have concluded this matter," a Goldman spokeswoman said. Goldman reported many of the issues to FINRA, voluntarily took steps to fix those issues, and provided assistance to FINRA during its investigation, she said.

Other violations by Goldman included sending inaccurate order data to FINRA for more than eight years, FINRA said.

In addition, Goldman did not have adequate controls in place to detect and prevent the violations.

The various violations occurred during several periods between 2006 and 2014, according to FINRA. During one period, between 2011 and 2013, Goldman Sachs failed to send details about more than 6.3 billion "order events" to FINRA, the regulator said. The figure represents 6.1 percent of all order information that Goldman was required to send during the period, according to FINRA.