By Denny Jacob

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday said 16 Wall Street firms agreed to pay combined penalties over $1.1 billion in connection with recordkeeping failures.

The SEC said the firms admitted the facts set in their respective orders, acknowledged that their conduct violated recordkeeping provisions and have begun implementing improvements to settle these matters.

Barclays Capital Inc., BofA Securities Inc. together with Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. together with DWS Distributors Inc. and DWS Investment Management Americas Inc., Goldman Sachs & Co., Morgan Stanley & Co. together with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC and UBS Securities LLC together with UBS Financial Services Inc. each agreed to pay $125 million in penalties each.

Jefferies LLC and Nomura Securities International Inc. each agreed to pay $50 million, while Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. agreed to pay $10 million.

The SEC said the firms' employees routinely communicated about business matters using text messaging applications on their personal devices between January 2018 through September 2021 and that the firms failed to maintain or preserve the substantial majority of these off-channel communications.

"Since the 1930s, such recordkeeping has been vital to preserve market integrity. As technology changes, it's even more important that registrants appropriately conduct their communications about business matters within only official channels, and they must maintain and preserve those communications," said SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.

Write to Denny Jacob at denny.jacob@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 27, 2022 16:51 ET (20:51 GMT)

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