HONG KONG: Hong Kong regulators on Tuesday fined banking giant HSBC over disclosure breaches, after it failed to properly outline its relationship with companies it covered in thousands of research reports for almost a decade.
There has been no evidence of the disclosure issues causing client losses, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) said.
Regulators said the issues were caused by flaws in HSBC’s “data recording and mapping across systems”, affecting more than 4,200 research reports on Hong Kong-listed securities.
The SFC said it had reprimanded and fined the lender HK$4.2 million (US$540,000) for the faulty disclosures regarding “its investment banking relationships with various companies covered in research reports published between 2013 and 2021.”
HSBC said in a statement to AFP it has “remediated our systems and controls at the time to ensure full compliance with our obligations and prevent recurrence.”
“This is a historic matter that HSBC self-reported to the SFC and (Hong Kong Monetary Authority) following internal detection,” it said.–AFP
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