On September 14, 2012, the SEC issued an order instituting cease-and-desist proceedings to the New York Stock Exchange LLC (NYSE) and NYSE Euronext. According to the Order: "When Congress mandated a national market system ('NMS') for trading securities in 1975, it emphasized that consolidated data 'would form the heart of the national market system.'... Accordingly, exchanges are required to send their best-priced quotations (or "quotes") and trade reports to be included in the consolidated feeds.... [T]o preserve the integrity of the consolidated feeds, a Commission rule--Rule 603(a) of Regulation NMS--requires that exchanges distribute market data on terms that are 'fair and reasonable' and 'not unreasonably discriminatory.' ... Over an extended period, NYSE violated Rule 603(a) in connection with the release of certain data through two proprietary feeds.... NYSE violated Rule 603(a) of Regulation NMS and the record retention provisions of Section 17(a)(1) of the Exchange Act and Rule 17a-1 thereunder. NYSE Euronext, which supplied the personnel responsible for these systems and compliance issues, caused the violations."

On September 14, 2012, the SEC announced that: "[It] brought first-of-its-kind charges against the New York Stock Exchange for compliance failures that gave certain customers an improper head start on trading information."