Unlock the publisher’s digest free
Roula Khalaf, editor -in -chief of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Four banks agreed to pay fines totaling more than 100 million pounds Sterling after an investigation by the UK’s care dog has revealed that employees used Bloomberg chat rooms to share sensitive information on golden trading.
Citi, HSBC, Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Canada have agreed to settle separate cases with competition and the markets of authority on driving which took place between 2009 and 2013.
A small number of banking traders have proven to have participated in “illegal” scholarships by sharing sensitive information in Bloomberg on-one on the price of British state bonds
The Deutsche Bank was also subject to the investigation opened by the CMA in 2018, but received immunity for having reported its conduct, a common practice as part of the regulator’s leniency policy where “a company that was Involved in the cartel activity ”helps an investigation.
Fines are the latest in a series of penalties imposed on world banks to share sensitive information on the currency and bond markets. In 2021, the European Commission inflicted a fine on a group of banks of 371 million euros for having participated in a cartel on the primary and secondary market of European government obligations, sharing prices and other sensitive information when approaching Debt auctions.
HSBC, Morgan Stanley and RBC received a 10% reduction in the regulations after the AMC increased its objections while Citi received a 55% discount, in part for the regulations before the regulator publishes its objections.
“The fines inflicted today reflect the commitment of the AMC to deal with the violations of competition law and to dissuade anti -competitive driving,” Juliette Ensseer, executive director of competition at the CMA, said on Friday.
“The fines would have been considerably higher if the banks had not already taken unusual measures to ensure that this will not happen again,” she added.
Citi, Deutsche, HSBC and Morgan Stanley each had a trader based in the United Kingdom sharing information in bilateral cats in Bloomberg, while RBC had two. None of the traders still work for banks, said the AMC.
Most of the information exchanged between banks related to prices in golden auctions. Deutsche Bank and RBC merchants have also coordinated trading strategies for the nods “with a limited number of covers,” said the CMA.
Deutsche and RBC also had the largest volume of messages with traders in banks that exchange information at 41 dates between November 2009 and April 2013.
Citi and Deutsche admitted their involvement before the AMC published its provisional conclusions in 2023 while HSBC, Morgan Stanley and RBC admitted any reprehensible act. In the statements sent to the Financial Times at the time, RBC and Morgan Stanley said they disagreed with the regulator’s conclusions while HSBC said that it “refutes” the allegations.
Morgan Stanley said on Friday that she had “made the commercial decision to draw a line as part of this long CMA investigation”. An HSBC spokesperson said the bank was “happy to put this investigation behind us”. Citi and RBC both declared that they were delighted to have resolved the question.
All banks said their compliance had improved considerably since the incidents had taken place.
The ACM has not said whether the exchanges have restricted or distorted market competition.
