Credit Suisse To Settle With Regulators Over Dark Pools

Credit Suisse is reportedly about to pay $80 million to the SEC and state regulators to settle claims arising out of their management of "dark pools." Dark pools are private exchanges for trading securities where large investors can undertake block trades. Because there is no transparency relating to the trades taking place in dark pools, they are susceptible to conflicts of interests by the operators of the dark pools and to predatory practices by high frequency traders.

This is not the first such settlement with and is unlikely to be the last:

The deal will be the second time in a few weeks that the SEC has set a record payout in a dark pool case. Last month, Investment Technology Group Inc. said it would pay $20.3 million for operating a proprietary trading desk that used knowledge of customers’ requests to trade for its own benefit, among other infractions. In January, UBS Group AG paid $14.4 million for lack of disclosures about how its dark pool operated.