Morgan Stanley discloses regulators’ request for business communications records

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Morgan Stanley disclosed in a filing on Wednesday that it is responding to “requests for information from regulators concerning its compliance with record-keeping requirements.”

The request is related to business communications on messaging platforms that were not approved by the firm, the bank said in a regulatory filing.

Reuters reported last October that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was looking in to how Wall Street banks kept track of employees’ work-related digital communications, such as text messages and emails.

Morgan Stanley also said on Wednesday that it may face civil liabilities from claims filed by block trade transaction participants or other people “who contend they were harmed … as a result of a share price decline allegedly caused by the activities of the Firm and/or its employees.”

In February, Morgan Stanley disclosed that U.S. regulators and prosecutors were probing various aspects of its investment bank’s block trading business. That disclosure followed reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was investigating whether financial executives had broken rules by tipping off hedge funds ahead of large sales of shares, known as “block trades”.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Dilts Marshall in New YorkEditing by Chris Reese and Matthew Lewis)