Morgan Stanley to pay $200 million to resolve U.S. record-keeping probe

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $200 million to U.S. regulators to resolve investigations into its record-keeping practices, it said on Friday.

The bank will pay the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission $125 million and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission $75 million to resolve probes into employee communications on messaging platforms that had not been approved by the company, it said in a filing.

Morgan Stanley had already set aside $200 million in its second quarter earnings to prepare for the penalty. Separately, Bank of America earmarked about $200 million for unauthorized electronic messaging by its employees, while Citigroup and Barclays also put aside cash to cover similar expected fines. The SEC has been looking into whether Wall Street banks have been adequately logging employees’ text messages and emails as bankers moved to remote working during the pandemic. Regulators require banks to keep records of their staff communications, and typically ban the use of personal email, texts and messaging applications for work purposes.

(Reporting by Saeed Azhar; Editing by David Gregorio)