Sources close to the Atlanta-based commodity exchange told FOW, that it believes the findings are too harsh, as its compliance team is larger than those of many other exchanges.

The CFTC review of the bourse’s ability to self-regulate assessed ICE’s compliance with “core principles” relating to audit trail, trade practice, market surveillance, disciplinary and despite resolution programmes, between June 1, 2007 and June 1, 2008.

The US derivatives regulator said that while it believed ICE’s compliance teams were very experienced, it had noticed a decline in staff numbers since its last year-long review in 2004.

The CFTC said that coupled with this, it recorded “several significant events” which it said placed the bourse’s compliance team under “notable strain”. In one case the CFTC highlighted, ICE was unable to complete a saturation audit trail recordkeeping review during the year.

The CFTC said it had also identified “several” investigations which it said were open for “excessively long time periods”.

As a result, the US regulator said it was recommending that ICE hire additional staff and monitor their workload. Should that get too large, then ICE should increase employee numbers yet further.

A spokesperson in Atlanta said ICE would not comment on the report.

However, a source close to the exchange said the findings failed to take into account mitigating factors, and that ICE believed its compliance team compared extremely favourably with those of its chief US rivals.