Investment firm Piper Jaffray & Co. has been fined $700,000 by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for email retention violations, related disclosure issues and supervisory and reporting violations.
According to a statement issued by FINRA, Piper Jaffray failed to retain approximately 4.3 million emails from November 2002 through December 2008. The company also failed to inform FINRA of its email retention and retrieval issues.
This isn’t the first time Piper Jaffray has been cited for email retention deficiencies. Information on FINRA’s Web site reports that the company was sanctioned in November 2002 in a joint action by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the New York Stock Exchange Regulation and NASD following investigations tied to conflicts of interest between Piper’s investment banking and research departments. As part of that settlement, Piper Jaffray was required to review its systems and certify that it had established systems and procedures designed to preserve electronic mail communications.
In settling the latest matter with FINRA, Piper Jaffray neither admitted nor denied the findings.
Read FINRA’s action against Piper Jaffray here.