(Marketwatch) JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay $135 million to settle claims that it improperly handled thousands of transactions involving foreign companies’ shares, the latest penalty in a wide-ranging probe of misconduct in the market.
JPMorgan improperly provided American depositary receipts for foreign shares that weren’t in the bank’s custody, which led the bank to inflate the number of a foreign company’s tradable shares, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday. The conduct cited by regulators occurred between 2011 and early 2015 in the market for ADRs, a securities product the bank created nearly a century ago.
“With these charges against JPMorgan, the SEC has now held all four depositary banks accountable for their fraudulent issuances of ADRs into an unsuspecting market,” said Sanjay Wadhwa, an official in the SEC’s New York office.
“We’re pleased to have resolved this matter, which is related to an industry practice we voluntarily ended a few years ago,” said JPMorgan spokesman Brian Marchiony. The bank, which cooperated with the investigation, didn’t admit or deny the SEC’s findings.
