JPMorgan, UBS among five banks facing £1 billion FX-rigging suit
Bloomberg, 29 July 2019
London: JPMorgan Chase & Co and UBS Group AG are among five banks being sued over allegations of foreign-exchange rigging in a class-action lawsuit seeking more than £1 billion ($1.2 billion, Dh4.4 billion).
Barclays Plc, Citigroup Inc and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc are also among the targets of the UK suit that will say pension funds, asset managers, hedge funds and corporations lost out because of market manipulation between 2007 and 2013 and should be compensated.
The lawsuit centres on collusion on foreign-exchange trading strategies, for which the European Commission fined Barclays, RBS, Citigroup, JPMorgan and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc a total of €1.07 billion ($1.2 billion) in May. UBS escaped a fine because it was the first to tell regulators about the collusion.
JPMorgan and UBS declined to comment. The other banks didn’t immediately reply to calls or emails seeking comment.
Traders ran two cartels on online chat rooms, the European regulator said. Many of them knew each other, calling one chat room “Essex Express n’ the Jimmy” because all of the traders but one met on a commuter train from Essex to London. Other names for rooms were the “Three Way Banana Split” and “Semi Grumpy Old Men.”
It’s the latest development in a case that’s already triggered regulatory probes around the world, and billions of dollars in fines as well as $2.3 billion in settlements in the US last year.
