The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday said it sued financial firm Virtu Financial Inc., accusing the market maker and trading-execution company of leaving customer trading data vulnerable to misuse, misleading customers on its data protections and taking in commissions regardless. In response, Virtu Financial
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said it had been in talks to settle the matter, and that the SEC sued after the company was unable to reach an agreement. But it defended its data-protection protocols and called the agency’s allegations “meritless.” It also said the agency didn’t actually accuse the company of any inappropriate use of that data, and said the suit “appears to be driven by politics.”
Shares of Virtu Financial were down 7.1% after hours on Tuesday. The SEC, in a complaint, said its charges focused on a period that ran from January 2018 to April 2019. The complaint said broker-dealer Virtu Americas — a part of Virtu Financial — ran two businesses that the company said were walled off from each other. One of those businesses was an order-execution service for big institutional investors, where Virtu Americas generally got a commission for orders. The other was a proprietary trading business, where Virtu Americas traded securities for its own accounts and gains. However, the …
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