The Securities and Exchange Commission has slapped a $5 million fine on Bloomberg Finance L.P. for allegedly misleading disclosures regarding BVAL, its paid subscription service which provides daily price valuations for fixed-income securities to financial services entities.
According to the US regulator between 2016 and October 2022, Bloomberg failed to inform its BVAL customers that the valuations for certain fixed-income securities could be based on a single data input, such as a broker quote. The SEC explained that this did not adhere to methodologies the data and media company had previously disclosed.
Furthermore, SEC alleges that Bloomberg was aware that certain customers such as mutual funds may use the BVAL price valuations when calculating the valuation of their assets. The regulator added that they are also likely to use the BVAL’s data to determine the value of their investments in government, supranational, agency and corporate, municipal bonds as well as securitized products.
