U.S. regulators extracted a $22.6 million penalty from Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities after finding it inaccurately described how it handled trades placed by small investors.
The punishment, a record of its kind for a broker handling retail client orders, concerned a widespread but often-attacked system that underpins how some investors’ orders are processed in the $26 trillion U.S. stock market. The case centers on a system where Citadel Securities pays retail brokers for the right to execute small investors’ trades.