WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Wall Street brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald has agreed to pay a $6.75 million penalty to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it misled investors at blank-check companies it controlled, the regulator said on Thursday .

“No investor has ever been harmed by the alleged issues described in the order,” Cantor Fitzgerald said in a statement. “We are pleased to have resolved this matter by mutual agreement with the SEC.”

The company’s president and CEO, Howard Lutnick, was recently nominated by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to serve as Secretary of Commerce.

According to the SEC, Cantor neither admitted nor denied the SEC’s findings.

Blank check companies or special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) are shell companies that raise funds through a stock exchange listing with the intention of acquiring a private company and taking it public, bypassing the initial public offering process.

According to the SEC, in 2020 and 2021, a team of Cantor Fitzgerald executives managed and controlled two SPAC companies that raised $750 million from investors through IPOs before the eventual SPAC mergers with View and Satellogic.

In their SEC filings, the SPACs said they had no substantive discussions about potential acquisition targets before the IPO, even though Cantor, acting on behalf of the SPAC, had already entered into negotiations with View and Satellogic, the SEC said.

“This enforcement action reflects the simple proposition that any disclosures regarding substantive conversations with potential targets must be factually accurate,” Sanjay Wadhwa, acting director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said in a statement.