EU Fines Trio of Banks $34 Million for Bond-Trading Cartel
Aoife White, 28 April 2021
Bank of America Corp., Credit Suisse Group AG and Credit Agricole SA were fined a total of about 28.5 million euros ($34 million) by European Union regulators for colluding on trading of U.S. supra-sovereign, sovereign and agency bonds.
Bank of America got the largest individual penalty of 12.6 million euros. Credit Suisse was fined 11.9 million euros and Credit Agricole was ordered to pay more than 3.9 million euros. Deutsche Bank AG participated in the cartel but wasn’t fined because it was the first to inform the EU about the illegal behavior.
“Traders colluded on trading strategies, exchanged sensitive pricing information and coordinated on prices,” said Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner in an emailed statement on Wednesday. “The behavior of the investment banks restricted competition in a market in which investment and pension funds regularly buy and sell bonds on behalf of their investors and pensioners.”
