The Sanctions Commission of SIX Group has issued a fine of CHF 75,000 against Swissquote Group Holding SA, an online financial and trading services provider, for allegedly violating its provision on ad hoc publicity.

The group announced on Friday that the sanction is for an ad hoc announcement Swissquote published on June 16, 2021. The announcement was headlined: “Thanks for outstanding growth, Swissquote expects record half-year results,” the financial market infrastructure services provider disclosed.

The penalty, which was decided on November 29, 2022, became legally binding after Swissquote chose not to appeal the decision, SIX said, adding that the penalty was based on proposals put forward by the SIX Exchange Regulation AG (SER), one of the regulatory bodies of the SIX trading venues.

In its statement on the issue, Swissquote explained that it communicated the press release to SER and other Swiss and international media platforms "in a timely manner."

"However, mainly due to a technical issue, the mailing of the press release to the persons registered on the Swissquote portal was carried out shortly before 10:00 CET on the said day," Swissquote added.

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Swissquote Reacts to SIX Group's DAH Fine

According to SIX's statement, SER, which monitors and enforces stock exchange regulations concerning listed firms, started investigating the issue on June 2, 2022 following an earlier preliminary inquiry into the issue.

“The Sanctions Commission of SIX Group AG largely concurred with SER’s sanction proposal regarding the alleged violations of the Listing Rules (LR) and the Directive on Ad hoc Publicity (DAH). It held that, mainly due to a technical issue and human error, the distribution of the ad hoc announcement dated 16 June 2021 was not in compliance with Article (Art.) 7 et seqq. DAH,” SIX explained in the statement.

However, Swissquote in its statement noted the SIX Sanctions Commission in its decision questioned why SER took almost a year after the incident and the preliminary investigation to open a formal investigation.

"In its decision, the SIX Sanctions Commission found that Swissquote's violation on the rules on ad hoc publicity was not as severe as SIX Exchange Regulation had assessed and hence reduced the amount of the fine that had been proposed (from CHF 125'000 to CHF 75'OOO). The SIX Sanctions Commission in particular recognized that the press release of 16 June 2021 had been broadly distributed," Swissquote explained.