Credit Suisse, the Swiss bank, was hit by two fines yesterday worth almost £6 million for falsifying the value of its assets and trading ahead of clients' orders.

Just hours after Britain's Financial Services Authority (FSA) levied a £5.6 million fine on the bank for failing to monitor its traders closely enough, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) issued a $350,000 (£187,400) penalty after accusing the bank of using its knowledge of customers' stock orders to make a profit.

In an announcement this afternoon, the NYSE said that Credit Suisse's US securities business traded ahead of clients' orders on four occasions between January 2005 and December 2007. The Swiss bank agreed to pay the penalty without admitting or denying its guilt.

This morning, London's City watchdog fined Credit Suisse for taking five months to spot a group of traders responsible for a $2.6 billion writedown.

Credit Suisse admitted in February that traders in Credit Suisse's structured credit group (SCG) in London had been "tardy" after mispricing synthetic collateralised obligations (CDOs), a type of complex financial instruments.

However, the FSA today fined the bank for two breaches of the regulator's principles.

It said that Credit Suisse "failed adequately to supervise the business of the SCG and did not act in a timely way on the concerns they had identified about the pricing of certain asset-backed positions."

The FSA also said that adequate systems and controls were not put in place by Credit Suisse, "which meant that they failed to recognise, for approximately five months, that certain of the SCG's asset-backed positions were wrongly valued."

Margaret Cole, director of enforcement at the FSA, said: “The penalty reflects our tougher stance on enforcement and our policy of imposing higher penalties to achieve credible deterrence."

She added: "The sudden and unexpected announcement of the writedown had the potential to undermine market confidence."

According to the FSA, Credit Suisse co-operated fully with the regulator and agreed to settle at an early stage of the investigation.

Credit Suisse conducted a review into the writedown, the FSA said.

"This identified serious failures in the subsidiaries' controls over the SCG and the operation and management of those controls and concluded that they were not effective.

"Senior management accepted the findings of the review and a comprehensive remedial programme is being undertaken."

Brady Dougan, chief executive of Credit Suisse, said: "This incident was unacceptable to me and the executive board. It does not represent the high ethical standards of Credit Suisse.

"Our overall control framework remains sound and we have taken actions to implement a remediation program to address the findings of our internal review. We are pleased to settle with the UK FSA, so we can now move forward."

Neither Credit Suisse nor the FSA would comment on the individual traders involved in the mispricing, who have all since left the bank.

The FSA has the power to independently investigate and fine individuals employees after a bank has settled its case.

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