ASIC v. Interactive Brokers LLC (marking the close, 2017)

Settled

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In December 2017 ASIC reported that Interactive Brokers LLC had paid a A$250,000 infringement notice penalty after its Markets Disciplinary Panel found grounds to believe it breached market integrity rules by accepting a client's repeated low-value bids for Altona Mining shares that looked intended to support the price, and by having inadequate surveillance. Payment is not an admission of liability.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

A$250k

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars. This regulator states penalties in AUD. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission announced this matter on December 14, 2017 as release 17-432MR. The respondent is Interactive Brokers LLC (0 individuals, 1 entity). The Markets Disciplinary Panel issued an infringement notice, which Interactive Brokers paid; the release states that compliance is not an admission of guilt or liability.

The Panel had reasonable grounds to believe that a client with a significant indirect holding in Altona Mining Limited placed many low-value bids through Interactive Brokers' automated system in November and December 2013, timed to lift the price at minimal cost and consuming little of the volume on offer. The Panel found the pattern consistent with marking the close and with an intention to support the share price. Interactive Brokers did not know of the trading until ASIC raised it. The respondent's alleged breach is that of a market participant: it should have suspected the client's intention, and its pre-trade filters, post-trade alerts and boilerplate procedures were inadequate against its peers.

The A$250,000 penalty is recorded in the native-currency field only; an earlier version of this record also stored it as US dollars.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Marking the close — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2017-12-14 ASIC media release

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• ASIC media release

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.