HONG KONG (Reuters) -Chinese customs officials have been investigating Tower Research Capital, Jump Trading and Optiver over their compliance with rules for importing specialized communication equipment for their high-frequency trading since July, state-backed financial news provider Futures Daily said on Friday.
The Shanghai branch of China’s General Administration of Customs has visited the three trading firms’ Shanghai offices over the past three months to carry out the probe, Futures Daily reported, citing unidentified sources.
The probe focused on these firms’ customized trading infrastructure, such as servers and chips, which is key for the traders to compete on millisecond-level speed advantages.
The move also comes amid the intensified competition in chip technology between China and the West.
New York-based Tower Research Capital was found “using uncleared or misdeclared overseas equipment, including servers, FPGA/ASIC chips, network cards, and switches, some of which lacked mandatory 3C certification,” Futures Daily said, referring to China Compulsory Certification.
Customs officials have asked Tower Research and Chicago-based Jump Trading to implement “restrictive management measures” for such special communication equipment, the report said, without providing details.
“This is an internal matter, we cannot disclose details to the public,” a Shanghai customs official told Futures Daily.
The investigation’s finding for Jump Trading and Amsterdam-based Optiver remains unknown, the report said.
Futures Daily’s report on the investigation was later removed from the publication’s website. Futures Daily confirmed the report was deleted, but declined to give a reason.
The Shanghai branch of the General Administration of Customs did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
(Reporting by Summer Zhen; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
