The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the major U.S. stock exchanges have sanctioned four Wall Street firms for violating market access rules.

The four firms — Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Interactive Brokers LLC — have been censured and fined a total of US$4.75 million for violating various provisions of market access rules, according to an announcement from FINRA. The firms settled the allegations without admitting or denying the allegations.

Deutsche Bank was fined US$2.5 million; Citigroup was fined US$1 million; J.P. Morgan was fined US$800,000; and Interactive Brokers was fined US$450,000.

FINRA, the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, and Bats, a CBOE Holdings Co., as well as their affiliated exchanges, brought the enforcement actions forward. They allege that the firms failed to comply with certain aspects of market access rules by failing to implement controls to prevent the entry of erroneous or duplicative orders. They are also accused of failing to prevent the entry of orders that exceed pre-set credit or capital thresholds, and failing to supervise customer trading to prevent potentially manipulative trading.

Each firm’s sanction was determined by, among other things, the number of erroneous orders that were entered, potentially manipulative trading activity that went undetected by the firms and the market impact of their control failures.

“It is important that firms have reasonable market access procedures in place to appropriately monitor for errors and risks that can be harmful to the integrity of our securities markets,” FINRA and the exchanges said in a joint statement.