CME Group CME released the following
statement in response to the CFTC's complaint filed today against NYMEX
Holdings:
Each of CME Group's exchanges, including the New York Mercantile Exchange
(NYMEX), places an extremely high priority on preserving the confidentiality
of customer information, and we expect our employees to abide by this guiding
principal without exception. For this reason, when we discover that any CME
Group employee has acted contrary to this principle we take decisive action to
reinforce our values and protect against the disclosure
of confidential information. Our policies and procedures designed to protect
against the disclosure of confidential information are sound, and we continue
to emphasize the importance of our values with our employees every day.
The CFTC court action announced today is disappointing because it relates to
incidents that CME Group has already addressed and handled appropriately,
and involved no harm to any customer or the markets. Nevertheless, the CFTC
is now seeking to hold NYMEX liable for the actions of these former employees,
which were contrary to exchange policy and, when discovered, resulted in
the immediate termination by us of their employment. NYMEX is not being
charged with any misconduct, is not being charged with a failure to properly
supervise its employees, and is not being charged with a failure to adhere to
the DCM core principles. Rather, the CFTC is seeking to impose a monetary
penalty against NYMEX based solely on these former employees' improper
activities, even though no customer suffered any loss and no third party
obtained any improper gain.
When we learned of instances in which NYMEX employees provided information to
unauthorized third parties, for the purpose of providing business leads to
those third parties, we immediately terminated the employees who engaged in
this conduct and reported that misconduct to the CFTC. Although the
information disclosed was not and could not have been used to engage in
insider trading or to otherwise affect the market in any way, nor did any
customer suffer a financial loss resulting from these disclosures, we took
swift action to make clear our commitment to protecting the confidentiality of
any information concerning our customers. We also reinforced procedures and
practices to protect against and detect such misconduct in the future.
We believe the complaint against NYMEX is neither justified as a matter of law
nor consistent with the regulatory structure established by the Commodity
Exchange Act. For these reasons, we have determined that we must oppose this
case in court because we simply do not believe the CFTC's claims in this case
are fair to NYMEX. We are confident that the company will prevail on these
claims.
As the world's leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, CME Group
(www.cmegroup.com) is where the world comes to manage risk. CME Group
exchanges offer the widest range of global benchmark products across all major
asset classes, including futures and options based on interest rates, equity
indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, metals, weather
and real estate. CME Group brings buyers and sellers together through its CME
Globex^® electronic trading platform and its trading facilities in New York
and Chicago. CME Group also operates CME Clearing, one of the world's leading
central counterparty clearing providers, which offers clearing and settlement
services across asset classes for exchange-traded contracts and
over-the-counter derivatives transactions. These products and services ensure
that businesses everywhere can substantially mitigate counterparty credit
risk.
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