SEC v. BlackRock Advisors, LLC (2023)

Settled

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In October 2023 the SEC settled with BlackRock Advisors over eight fund reports from 2015 to 2019 that mislabelled a film-financing investment as diversified financial services and misstated its coupon, censuring it and imposing a $2.5 million penalty. The case does not concern a benchmark.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$2.5m

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$2.5m

Alleged gain

—

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The Securities and Exchange Commission instituted and settled this proceeding on October 24, 2023 (Advisers Act release 6468), without admission or denial by BlackRock Advisors.

The order finds that in eight annual and semi-annual reports filed from October 2015 to October 2019 for the BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust, a closed-end fund, BlackRock described the Aviron Group, to which the fund lent through a facility and which at one point was its largest holding, as being in diversified financial services, when it developed print and advertising plans for films and funded their distribution costs. Six reports also misstated the coupon Aviron was to pay, making the yield look larger in four, smaller in one and conflicting in one. BlackRock found and corrected the errors in 2019.

The record carried a benchmark-submission tag that nothing in the order supports, so it now carries none. BlackRock was ordered to cease and desist from Section 206(4) of the Advisers Act, Rule 206(4)-8 and Section 34(b) of the Investment Company Act, censured and ordered to pay a $2,500,000 penalty.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

Timeline

1. 2023-10-24 Administrative proceeding instituted (cease-and-desist)

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• SEC order

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.