The Argentine regulator suspends the Santander stockbroking company

2023-10-21 06:42:26

The Argentine capital market regulator suspended this Friday “preventively” the securities company Santander Valores, belonging to Banco Santander Argentinato operate with its own portfolio or on behalf of third parties in the stock market, as confirmed to EFE by spokespersons for the institution.

The measure was taken after the National Securities Commission (CNV) confirmed “that the operations carried out on the day” this Friday “violated the current regulations, with the aggravating factor of the strong exceedance with respect to the regulated thresholds,” reported the sources, in reference to the operation for the purchase of the so-called financial dollars.

This Friday, the securities company Santander Valores had received a request for information from the CNV to verify whether it had failed to comply with a rule issued on October 10 for a client, which restricts currency operations in the local market.

As a result of this request for information, the CNV verified that Santander Valores “violated” general resolution 981, which “sets limits on large capital operations”since it establishes that agents had to report five days in advance those operations to purchase dollars that exceeded 200 million pesos (538 thousand euros at the official exchange rate).

This is a standard that is part of a series of measures aimed at reducing volatility in the market for so-called financial dollars and that reaches investors and securities agents from abroad – stockbroking companies and intermediaries, such as, for example, banks – and large local investors. In particular, the rule requires local investors to notify five business days in advance if the amount of the operation is greater than 200 million pesos per day, through a sworn declaration that must be sent by the stock exchange companies to the CNV. .

For the CNV, Santander Valores “not only failed to comply with the obligation to inform the CNV five days in advance, but also carried out operations for a value much higher than the established limit”, since The limit for these operations is 200 million pesos and 4,000 million were operated of pesos for a specific client.

Argentina restricts access to the official exchange market and applies a series of regulations for the purchase of foreign currency in the financial market to contain the increase in parallel exchange rates in relation to the official one, a gap of more than 100% that reveals the lack of foreign currency in the South American country and the weakness of the local currency.

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A statement from Santander Valores had confirmed that the brokerage company received “a request for administrative information from CNV about clients” of the firm and that the request is “about duly documented operations of Santander Valores.” “As usual, Santander Valores strictly complies with information requests from regulatory bodies,” it said in the statement, adding that “it has adequate knowledge of all its clients and the origin of the funds for all its operations.”

Santander Argentina bank is one of the main private entities in the Argentine financial system, it has 464 branches, more than 3.5 million clients and employs 8,900 people.