Citadel Securities Wins Case Over SEC Audit Trail Funding

Citadel Securities and a financial-industry trade group won a suit challenging the funding for an SEC market-tracking database that was set to cost Wall Street billions of dollars in fees.

A federal appeals court in Atlanta on Friday invalidated the Securities and Exchange Commission’s funding plan for the so-called Consolidated Audit Trail as “arbitrary and capricious.” The court placed its decision on hold to give the SEC time to conduct an economic analysis and “reconsider the allocation of historical and prospective CAT costs.”