City Index fined for faulty reporting

The Financial Services Authority has fined City Index, the spread-betting firm owned by the financier and former Conservative Party treasurer Michael Spencer, £490,000 for failing to provide accurate transaction reports.

The regulator, which examines data from spread-betting firms when looking for potential market abuses such as insider dealing, said the fine would have been higher, at £700,000, if City Index had not agreed to settle early.

The FSA said that between November 2007 and September 2009, City Index failed to submit accurate reports for about two million transactions – nearly 60 per cent of its reportable deals.

City Index failed to report about 55,000 transactions, and reported about 1,970,000 transactions with one or more data fields completed improperly.