Barclays, Citigroup, JP Morgan, MUFG and Royal Bank of Scotland were fined a combined 1.07 billion euros) by the European Union on Thursday for rigging the multitrillion-dollar foreign exchange market. According to the European Commission, individual traders at the banks involved, formed two cartels to manipulate the spot foreign exchange market for 11 currencies, including the dollar, the euro and the pound. While Citigroup was hit with the highest fine of 311 million euros, Swiss bank UBS was not fined as it had alerted the European Commission of these two cartels.
The five-year investigation found that nine traders from the different banks exchanged sensitive information and trading plans in chatrooms and occasionally co-ordinated trading strategies. “The traders, who were direct competitors, typically logged in to multilateral chatrooms ... and had extensive conversations about a variety of subjects, including recurring updates on their trading activities,” the Commission said in a statement.
The full article is available on Reuters.