Swedish Energy Regulator Investigates Erroneous Trade Orders

This week Energimarknadsinspektionen (Ei), the Swedish energy market regulator, announced (click here – the article is in Swedish) that it is embarking on a supervision programme aimed at assessing the procedures that firms trading power and gas under REMIT have in place around handling incorrect bids. In certain circumstances, erroneous bids can be considered as market abuse under Article 5 of REMIT.

Ei notes that as part of the project, they intend to contact several (presumably Sweden-based) market participants to conduct both surveys and interviews. The project is expected to last until the first quarter of 2025 and the results will be published in a report.

This announcement is undoubtedly linked to ‘fat-finger’ incident from 23 November 2023 in the Finnish power market which sent shock waves through the Nordic market and triggered several investigations by various regional regulators (click here and here).

 RegTrail Insights

The purpose of the project, according to Ei, is to “increase knowledge and awareness among actors of the applicable regulations”. While the announcement does not indicate the intent to use these interactions as a basis for later enforcement, firms based in Sweden that trade EU power and gas are strongly advised to review, with urgency, that they have the appropriate policies and procedures in place with regards to responding to order and trade entry errors, and that all personnel, including those involved in publishing urgent market messages (UMMs), are appropriately knowledgeable about these policies and procedures and that they indeed correspond to practice. 

Ei may call on a wide array of personnel from within the trading business to explain their understanding of these policies and procedures, as well as to describe the steps they take in the event an erroneous order is identified. While the publication of UMMs has long been considered a standard practice in Nordic markets, a review of current practices is recommended. Such policies and procedures should cover both auction and continuous market activity without exception.

While firms with shoddy practices in place might not be subject to direct action as part of this review for gaps and deficiencies, it would undoubtedly leave a negative impression that might taint the organisation and open it to further regulatory scrutiny.