The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has handed Citigroup Inc.'s global markets unit a US$2-million fine, claiming a number of trade reporting violations.

The violations include publishing flawed stock quotations, FINRA said in a statement issued yesterday.

FINRA, the brokerage industry's self-policing organisation, found that Citigroup failed to properly monitor certain trading systems at the opening of the market on June 17, 2005, a quadruple-witching day. Quadruple-witching Fridays occur once each quarter, when stock index futures, index options, stock options and options on stock index futures all expire on the same day.

The system failures resulted in publishing errors of 6,800 trades in more than 170 securities that the firm had to ultimately cancel. The system failures also led to the publication of thousands of flawed quotations, which triggered trades by other firms at false prices, requiring these firms to have to cancel more than 1,400 trades, FINRA said.

FINRA further found that Citigroup failed to report about 6 million orders to the organization's Order Audit Trail System between 1999 and 2006. The agency also said Citigroup inaccurately reported or failed to report hundreds of thousands of other transactions between 2002 and 2006.