‘Suspicious transaction and order report’ (STOR) is the report on suspicious orders and transactions, including any cancellation or modification thereof, that could constitute insider dealing, market manipulation or attempted insider dealing or market manipulation, which has a harmonised template and is submitted electronically.

                       
                 
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The relevant EU provisions are:

- Article 16(1) and (2) of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 (Market Abuse Regulation - MAR), and

- Article 1(a) of the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/957 of 9 March 2016 supplementing Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council with regard to regulatory technical standards for the appropriate arrangements, systems and procedures as well as notification templates to be used for preventing, detecting and reporting abusive practices or suspicious orders or transactions.

Reporting entities not only have to report transactions carried out on venue, but also OTC transactions whenever concerning instruments in scope of MAR. The STOR template is contained in the Annex to the said Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/957 of 9 March 2016.
Under the MAR (and its predecessor the Market Abuse Directive - MAD) regulated industry plays a key gatekeeping role to complement that of National Competent Authorities (NCAs) in preserving market integrity. The said concept dates back to 2003, when the MAD introduced an obligation requiring Member States to ensure that persons professionally arranging transactions in financial instruments notify competent authorities of transactions that might constitute insider dealing or market manipulation. In 2016, under MAR, the requirement was extended to market operators and investment firms operating trading venues and to also capture orders.

The extended scope of MAR was among the reasons for a significant increase in the number of suspicious transaction reports, for example BaFin Annual Report 2018 mentions (p. 129) the increase from 547 reports in 2015, before the MAR entered into force, to 3,104 in 2018.

Also the ESMA press release of 12 December 2019 (ESMA calls for strengthened supervision on suspicious transaction reporting, ESMA71-99-126) notes that since the entry-into-force of MAR in mid-2016, which broadened the reporting requirements, National Competent Authorities received 10,653 STORs in 2017 and 11,130 STORs in 2018 - this compares to 4,634 reports during the final year of the Market Abuse Directive.

 

STOR statistics

clip2    Links

   

Persons professionally arranging and executing transactions

 
Suspicious transaction and order reports, FCA’s website

 

FCA Final Notice, Interactive Brokers (UK) Limited, 25 January 2018


ESMA Final Report of 12 December 2019 (Peer Review on the collection and use of STORs under the Market Abuse Regulation as a source of information in market abuse investigations, ESMA42-111-491) evidences (p. 8):

- investment firms as the most populous category of actors submitting STORs (84%),
- as regards the types of market abuse - 39% of STORs related to suspected market manipulation and 60% to insider trading,
- as regards the asset classes - 75% of STORs related to equities.

 

Enforcement actions

 

The example of enforcement actions undertaken by regulators for the non-compliance with the STOR legal regime is the UK FCA’s imposition on 25 January 2018 of a financial penalty on Interactive Brokers (UK) Limited (IBUK) in the amount of £1,049,412 (FCA Final Notice, Interactive Brokers (UK) Limited, 25 January 2018).

Circumstances of the case explained by the FCA in the above Notice of 25 January 2018 were as follows:

1. IBUK delegated the conduct of its initial post-trade surveillance to a affiliate company;
2. however, the IBUK’s oversight over an outsourced activity was considered by the FCA inadequate, and in particular IBUK failed to monitor the quality of the reviews that were conducted;
3. IBUK also failed to ensure that members of the outsourced team had adequate guidance or effective training;
4. all these failures increased the risk that potentially suspicious trading would go undetected;
5. as a result, IBUK was unable to identify some potentially suspicious transactions by its clients that ought to have been identifiable, had it been in compliance with its regulatory obligations;
6. IBUK’s failure to ensure that it had appropriate systems and controls to identify and manage the particular market abuse risks to which it was exposed had direct and serious consequences, in that it failed to alert the FCA to suspicious transactions by its clients, on three occasions listed in the above FCA’s Notice of 25 January 2018;
7. FCA assessed that the IBUK’s failure to oversee effectively the outsourced activity with regard to post-trade monitoring undermined the IBUK’s ability to manage any of its market abuse risks effectively. In the FCA’s opinion the above IBUK’s failings were serious.

 

 

Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/957 of 9 March 2016 supplementing Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council with regard to regulatory technical standards for the appropriate arrangements, systems and procedures as well as notification templates to be used for preventing, detecting and reporting abusive practices or suspicious orders or transactions

 

Article 1(a)

‘Suspicious transaction and order report’ (STOR) means the report on suspicious orders and transactions, including any cancellation or modification thereof, that could constitute insider dealing, market manipulation or attempted insider dealing or market manipulation to be made pursuant to Article 16(1) and (2) of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014.

 

Recitals 6 - 12

 

(6) A single and harmonised template for electronically submitting a suspicious transaction and order report (STOR) should assist compliance with the requirements set out in this Regulation and in Article 16 of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 in markets where orders and transactions are becoming increasingly cross-border. It should also facilitate the efficient sharing of information on suspicious orders and transactions between competent authorities in cross-border investigations.


(7) The relevant information fields contained in the template, if completed clearly, comprehensively, objectively and accurately, should assist the competent authorities to promptly assess the suspicion and initiate relevant actions. The template should therefore allow the persons submitting the report to provide the information considered relevant about the suspicious orders and transactions reported and to explain the reasons for the suspicion. The template should also allow to provide personal data that would make it possible to identify the persons involved in the suspicious orders and transactions and assist the competent authorities in the conduct of investigations to rapidly analyse the trading behaviour of the suspected persons and to establish connections with persons involved in other suspicious trades. Such information should be provided at the outset, so that the integrity of the investigation is not compromised by the potential necessity for a competent authority to revert in the course of an investigation to the person who submitted the STOR. It should include the date of birth, the address, information about the person's employement and accounts, and, where applicable, the client identifier code and the national identification number of the individuals concerned.


(8) To facilitate the submission of a STOR, the template should allow for the attachment of documents and materials considered necessary to support the notification made, including in the form of an annex listing the orders or transactions relevant for the same report and detailling their prices and volumes.


(9) Market operators and investment firms operating a trading venue and persons professionally arranging or executing transactions should not notify all orders received or transactions conducted that have triggered an internal alert. Such a requirement would be inconsistent with the requirement to assess on a case-by-case basis whether there are reasonable grounds for suspicion.


(10) The reports of suspicious orders and transactions should be submitted to the relevant competent authority without delay once a reasonable suspicion that those orders or transactions could constitute insider dealing, market manipulation or attempted insider dealing or market manipulation has been formed. The analysis as to whether or not a given order or transaction is to be considered suspicious should be based on facts, not speculation or presumption and should be carried out as quickly as practicable. The practice of delaying the submission of a report in order to incorporate further suspicious orders or transactions is irreconcilable with the obligation to act without delay, where a reasonable suspicion has already been formed. In any case the submission of a STOR should be assessed on a case-by-case basis to determine if several orders and transactions could be reported in a single STOR. Furthermore, the practice which consists of waiting for a particular number of STORs to accumulate before reporting them should not be regarded as consistent with the requirement to notify without delay.


(11) There might be circumstances when a reasonable suspicion of insider dealing, market manipulation or attempted insider dealing or market manipulation is formed some time after the suspected activity occurred, due to subsequent events or available information. This should not be a reason for not reporting the suspected activity to the competent authority. In order to demonstrate compliance with the reporting requirements in those specific circumstances, the person submitting the report should be able to justify the time discrepancy between the occurrence of the suspected activity and the formation of the reasonable suspicion of insider dealing, market manipulation or attempted insider dealing or market manipulation.


(12) Retention of and access to STORs which have been submitted and of the analysis performed on suspicious orders and transactions which did not result in the submission of a STOR forms an important part of the procedures to detect market abuse. The ability to recall and review the analysis performed on STORs which have been submitted, as well as those suspicious orders and transactions which were analysed, but in relation to which it was concluded that the grounds for suspicion were not reasonable, will assist persons professionally executing or arranging transactions and market operators or investment firms operating a trading venue in exercising their judgement when considering subsequent suspicious orders or transactions. The analysis performed on suspicious orders and transactions which did not ultimately lead to a STOR being submitted assists those persons in refining their surveillance systems and in detecting patterns of repeated behaviour, the aggregate of which could, considered as a whole, result in a reasonable suspicion of insider dealing, market manipulation or attempted insider dealing or market manipulation. Furthermore, the above records will also assist in evidencing compliance with the requirements laid down in this Regulation and facilitate the performance by competent authorities of their supervisory, investigatory and enforcement functions under Regulation (EU) No 596/2014.

 

 

 

 

Market Abuse Regulation (MAR)

 

Article 16

Prevention and detection of market abuse

1. Market operators and investment firms that operate a trading venue shall establish and maintain effective arrangements, systems and procedures aimed at preventing and detecting insider dealing, market manipulation and attempted insider dealing and market manipulation, in accordance with Articles 31 and 54 of Directive 2014/65/EU.
A person referred to in the first subparagraph shall report orders and transactions, including any cancellation or modification thereof, that could constitute insider dealing, market manipulation or attempted insider dealing or market manipulation to the competent authority of the trading venue without delay.
2. Any person professionally arranging or executing transactions shall establish and maintain effective arrangements, systems and procedures to detect and report suspicious orders and transactions. Where such a person has a reasonable suspicion that an order or transaction in any financial instrument, whether placed or executed on or outside a trading venue, could constitute insider dealing, market manipulation or attempted insider dealing or market manipulation, the person shall notify the competent authority as referred to in paragraph 3 without delay.
3. Without prejudice to Article 22, persons professionally arranging or executing transactions shall be subject to the rules of notification of the Member State in which they are registered or have their head office, or, in the case of a branch, the Member State where the branch is situated. The notification shall be addressed to the competent authority of that Member State.
4. The competent authorities as referred to in paragraph 3 receiving the notification of suspicious orders and transactions shall transmit such information immediately to the competent authorities of the trading venues concerned.
5. In order to ensure consistent harmonisation of this Article, ESMA shall develop draft regulatory technical standards to determine:
(a) appropriate arrangements, systems and procedures for persons to comply with the requirements established in paragraphs 1 and 2; and
(b) the notification templates to be used by persons to comply with the requirements established in paragraphs 1 and 2.
ESMA shall submit those draft regulatory technical standards to the Commission by 3 July 2016.
Power is delegated to the Commission to adopt the regulatory technical standards referred to in the first subparagraph in accordance with Articles 10 to 14 of Regulation (EU) No 1095/2010.

 

 

 

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