Five banks fined more than US$1 billion by EU for rigging multitrillion-dollar foreign exchange market: Barclays, RBS, Citigroup, JP Morgan and MUFG
- Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Citigroup, JP Morgan and MUFG formed two cartels to manipulate the spot foreign exchange market for 11 currencies
Five banks, including Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, have been fined a total of more than €1 billion (US$1.1 billion) by the European Union for rigging the multitrillion-dollar foreign exchange market.
The European Commission said the banks, which also include Citigroup, JP Morgan and MUFG (Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group), formed two cartels to manipulate the spot foreign exchange market for 11 currencies, including the US dollar, the euro and the pound.
The financial industry has been hit with billions of euros in fines worldwide over the last decade for the rigging of benchmarks used in many day-to-day financial transactions.
“These cartel decisions send a clear message that the commission will not tolerate collusive behaviour in any sector of the financial markets,” the European competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said in a statement.
Vestager said most of the traders knew each other on a personal basis and set up chat rooms with names such as “Essex Express ’n the Jimmy” because all of them except “James” lived in Essex and met on their train commute to London.
One cartel ran between December 2007 to January 2013, while the other operated from December 2009 to July 2012, it added.
