SEC v. Mizuho Securities USA LLC (2018)

Settled

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 2, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, with sampled and disputed records read a second time. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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In 2018, the SEC settled an administrative proceeding with Mizuho Securities USA LLC for failing to maintain and enforce policies preventing misuse of non-public customer buyback order information, which its traders passed around internally and on several occasions to customers. Mizuho paid a $1,250,000 civil penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$1.3m

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$1.3m

Alleged gain

—

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.

What is alleged to have happened

the Securities and Exchange Commission announced this matter on July 23, 2018 as release 34-83685. The respondent named is Mizuho Securities USA LLC. The order finds that from about December 2012 to December 2014 Mizuho failed to maintain and enforce information barriers around issuer share buyback orders, so execution and sales traders received that order information almost daily, the head execution trader had direct access to the international desk's order system, and traders disclosed order size and limit price to certain customers on several occasions. It paid a $1,250,000 civil penalty.

The order cites a 1988 congressional record listing "insider trading, scalping, and front running" as examples of misuse that Section 15(g) policies guard against; it charges no trader with any of them. The newsletter scalping and insider trading tags are removed and no technique fits a policies failure, so the record carries none.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

Timeline

1. 2018-07-23 Administrative proceeding instituted (cease-and-desist)

Primary documents

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

• SEC order

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.