Virtu Financial, Inc.; Virtu Americas LLC
U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Corrected Litigation Release No. 26427 / December 3, 2025
Securities and Exchange Commission v. Virtu Financial Inc. et al, No. 1:23-cv-08072 (S.D.N.Y. filed Sept. 12, 2023)
SEC Obtains Final Consent Judgment as to Virtu Broker-Dealer Regarding Alleged Failure to Establish, Maintain, and Enforce Policies and Procedures Reasonably Designed to Prevent Misuse of Its Customers’ Material Nonpublic Information
On December 2, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a final consent judgment in the SEC’s civil enforcement action against broker-dealer Virtu Americas LLC (“Virtu Americas”). Virtu Americas consented to entry of the judgment without admitting or denying the SEC’s allegations.
The SEC’s complaint, filed on September 12, 2023 (and amended January 12, 2024), alleged that Virtu Americas operated both a proprietary trading business, in which it bought and sold securities in its own account and for its benefit, as well as a trade execution business for its large institutional customers, whereby it executed customer orders. The complaint alleged that from at least January 2018 through April 2019, Virtu Americas failed to establish, maintain, and enforce policies and procedures reasonably designed to ensure that its proprietary traders could not access material nonpublic information of Virtu Americas’ customer orders – including, among other things, the customer name, the security name, the side (buy or sell), and the execution price and volume – maintained in a primary database for daily business operations and a backup database.
Without admitting or denying the Commission’s allegations against it, Virtu Americas consented to the entry of a final judgment that permanently enjoins it from violating Section 15(g) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and orders it to pay a civil monetary penalty of $2.5 million. Pursuant to the terms of the settlement, the Commission agreed to the dismissal with prejudice of all other claims and relief sought against Virtu Americas and of all claims and relief sought against its parent, Virtu Financial, Inc.
The litigation was led by Damon Taaffe and Zachary Avallone under the supervision of James Carlson. The investigation was conducted by Alexandra M. Arango and David A. Becker of the Home Office and David Bennett and Paul Kim of the Market Abuse Unit.