A Hearing Committee Panel of Toronto Stock Exchange Inc. has approved a settlement made between TSE Regulation Services and RBC Dominion Securities Inc. over allegations of poor bookkeeping.

Under the terms of the settlement, RBC DS admits that between June 1998 and August 2000, it failed to report to the exchange the total short positions in certain securities on its books. It has agreed to pay a fine of $50,000; and pay $6,800 towards the cost of TSE RS’s investigation.

TSE RS says that RBC DS failed to report the total short positions in 123 securities on its books as a result of two errors. The first error concerned a verbal agreement with an investment dealer client pursuant to which RBC DS abrogated its responsibility to the investment dealer client to report short positions held on RBC DS’s books for this client and a bank client. The second error was a systemic problem involving the incorrect designation of accounts in which short selling was being carried out.