Tag: JPMorgan

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Article: After the Boss Calls Bitcoin a ‘Fraud’ — JP Morgan Buys the Dip

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After the Boss Calls Bitcoin a ‘Fraud’ — JP Morgan Buys the Dip

Jamie Redman, 16 September 2017

Just recently news.Bitcoin.com reported on JP Morgan executive Jamie Dimon calling bitcoin a “fraud” and claiming he would fire any employee from his firm who traded the digital currency for being “stupid.” Now it seems JP Morgan has been caught red-handed purchasing a bunch of XBT shares, otherwise known as exchange-traded-notes, that track the price of Bitcoin.

According to public records of Nordnet trading logs, the two associated firms JP Morgan Securities Ltd., and Morgan Stanley bought roughly 3M euro worth of XBT note shares. Interestingly after the recent regulatory crackdown in China, and the statements from JP Morgan’s senior executive Jamie Dimon talking trash about bitcoin, his firm bought the dip on September 15. In fact, out of all the companies on the list, like Goldman Sachs and Barclays, the JP Morgan team of buyers purchased the most XBT notes.

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Article: Top Wall Street Banks Accused of Conspiracy to Control Stock Lending Market Via Threatening Tactics and Boycotts

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Top Wall Street Banks Accused of Conspiracy to Control Stock Lending Market Via Threatening Tactics and Boycotts
Cohen Milstein, 17 August 2017

Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, UBS, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Face Antitrust Allegations

NEW YORK—Several of the world’s largest investment banks have colluded, in violation of federal antitrust laws, to create and maintain exclusive control of the more than $1 trillion stock loan market, reaping massive profits at the expense of investors, according to three public employees’ pension funds which today filed a federal class action lawsuit. The suit alleges that since at least 2009, six of the world’s largest investment banks—Bank of America, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and UBS—have illegally conspired to overcharge investors and maintain the power they hold over the stock loan market, obstructing multiple efforts to create competitive electronic exchanges that would benefit both stock lenders and borrowers. Continue reading “Article: Top Wall Street Banks Accused of Conspiracy to Control Stock Lending Market Via Threatening Tactics and Boycotts”

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Article: JPMorgan Fined for Bad Trade Surveillance Parameter Settings

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JPMorgan Fined for Bad Trade Surveillance Parameter Settings

Trillium, 1  August 2017

Last week, the enforcement divisions of the three major exchange groups released a settlement agreement with JP Morgan Securities imposing an $800,000 fine for inadequate pre-trade controls and post-trade surveillance.

The post-trade surveillance portion of the settlement agreement revealed that JPMS used an unnamed “commercial non-proprietary Third-Party Surveillance System” (it wasn’t Surveyor), but set the parameters of that system “at levels that were unreasonable to detect activity that may be indicative of layering and spoofing activity.”

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Article: BlackRock, PIMCO said to plan new front in bank FX-rigging cases

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BlackRock, PIMCO said to plan new front in bank FX-rigging cases

Bloomberg, 05 March 2017

Some of the world’s biggest investors are working with a U.S. law firm to prepare a fresh wave of litigation against banks accused of rigging foreign-exchange markets.

BlackRock, Pacific Investment Management Co. and hedge fund BlueCrest Capital Management are working with law firm Quinn Emanuel to recover losses they blame on the manipulation of currency benchmarks, according to two people familiar with the case, who asked not to be identified because nothing has been filed.

The target banks, including Barclays, Citigroup, HSBC Holdings, J.P. Morgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland Group and UBS Group, have been fined billions of dollars for conspiring to rig FX benchmarks. The firm, which will probably file lawsuits in London and New York, is trying to attract additional investors, the people said.

Quinn Emanuel’s clients will likely opt out of an existing New York class action over currency manipulation that won a total of about $2 billion in settlements from HSBC, Barclays, RBS, Goldman Sachs Group and others in 2015, according to people with knowledge of the firm’s strategy.

Opting out of the class action would allow large investors to seek higher settlements by pursuing a global strategy that includes the recovery of losses from London, where a significant portion of global trades are settled. The existing class action is limited to transactions that took place in New York.

The two law firms that are running the existing U.S. lawsuit, Hausfeld and Scott + Scott, won’t give up control of the case without a fight.

In an April 24 letter emailed to U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield, lawyers complained that “certain unnamed law firms were sending false and misleading communications to class members to persuade them to opt out of the settlements,” the judge said in a court order Thursday. She set a May 12 deadline for the two firms to make a formal request as to what she should do in response.

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Article: Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne Talks Blockchain and Making History With t0

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Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne Talks Blockchain and Making History With t0

Rob Marvin, 22 December 2016

Blockchain is racking up all kinds of firsts. The distributed immutable ledger now has its own blockchain-as-a-service market, a host of new blockchain startups, coalitions, and open-source projects, and is seeing adoption in countless industries from global banking and finance to the legal cannabis space. The latest first for the buzzy emerging technology comes in digital stock trading. Continue reading “Article: Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne Talks Blockchain and Making History With t0”

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Article: FBI arrests senior HSBC banker accused of rigging multibillion-dollar deal

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FBI arrests senior HSBC banker accused of rigging multibillion-dollar deal

Rupert Neate in New York and Jill Treanor in London, 20 July 2016

Mark Johnson and a colleague allegedly defrauded clients and ‘manipulated the foreign exchange market to benefit themselves and their bank’

A senior HSBC banker has been arrested by the FBI as he attempted to board a transatlantic flight and charged him with fraudulently rigging a multibillion-dollar currency exchange deal.

Mark Johnson, a British citizen and HSBC’s global head of foreign exchange trading, and a colleague are accused of “defrauding clients” and alleged to have “corruptly manipulated the foreign exchange market to benefit themselves and their bank”.

He was arrested on Tuesday night shortly before he was due to fly to London from New York’s JFK airport, and was due to be formally charged by a judge at Brooklyn federal court later on Wednesday. He was later released on bail.

A second Briton, Stuart Scott, who was HSBC’s European head of foreign exchange trading in London until December 2014, is accused of the same crimes. A warrant was issued for Scott’s arrest.

They are the first people to be charged in connection with the US government’s long-running investigation into bankers’ alleged rigging of the $5.3tn (£4tn) per day forex market.

“The defendants allegedly betrayed their client’s confidence, and corruptly manipulated the foreign exchange market to benefit themselves and their bank,” said the US assistant attorney general Leslie Caldwell. “This case demonstrates the [US Department of Justice’s] criminal division’s commitment to hold corporate executives, including at the world’s largest and most sophisticated institutions, responsible for their crimes.”

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Article: DEUTSCHE BANK ADMITS BIG BANKS RIGGED GOLD AND SILVER MARKETS

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DEUTSCHE BANK ADMITS BIG BANKS RIGGED GOLD AND SILVER MARKETS

Gog Magog War, 26 April 2016

Recently, a European mega-bank, Deutsche Bank, admitted that it cooperated with other global mega banks to manipulate the gold and silver markets (first link). This story deserves far more coverage and analysis than it has been given in the establishment media. As one reads the links, it is quite evident that the mega-banks rigged the gold and silver markets to suppress the prices of both metals. However, in a conspiracy to manipulate the prices either up or down in the short term, the banking insiders could reap huge illegal profits via such insider trading actions. Continue reading “Article: DEUTSCHE BANK ADMITS BIG BANKS RIGGED GOLD AND SILVER MARKETS”

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Article: It looks like traders might have manipulated another huge market

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It looks like traders might have manipulated another huge market

Portia Crowe

Business Insider, Portia Crowe

A handful of London traders may have rigged the UK-government bond market, according to reports from Global Capital and The Wall Street Journal.
Global Capital reports that regulators have contacted Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Agricole, Credit Suisse, and Nomura in relation to a possible investigation into manipulation in the British-government bond market.

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Article: JPMorgan Asia Units Fined for Regulatory Breaches in Hong Kong

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JPMorgan Asia Units Fined for Regulatory Breaches in Hong Kong

Cathy Kit Ching Chan

Bloomberg, 15 December 2015

JP Morgan Chase & Co. unites were fined HK$30 million ($3.9 million) in Hong Kong for regulatory breaches by the firm’s instituional equities business between 2010 and 2013, including breaking a ban on so-called naked short-selling.

PDF (4 pages): JP Morgan Fine Hong Kong

Ex- Goldman Macro Trader Lim Reopens $1.1 Billion Hedge Fund

Bei Hu

Bloomberg, 2016

Guard Capital Management, the Hong Kong-based firm led by former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. trader Leland Lim, reopened its macro hedge fund to new investors this month after outperforming peers in 2015, said a person with knowledge of the matter.

PDF (4 pages): JP Morgan Fine Hong Kong

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Article: How Wall Street’s Bankers Stayed Out of Jail

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How Wall Street’s Bankers Stayed Out of Jail

The probes into bank fraud leading up to the financial industry’s crash have been quietly closed. Is this justice?

by William D. Cohan

Any narrative of how we got to this point has to start with the so-called Holder Doctrine, a June 1999 memorandum written by the then–deputy attorney general warning of the dangers of prosecuting big banks—a variant of the “too big to fail” argument that has since become so familiar.

. . .extracting large settlements paid with shareholders’ money is not the same as bringing alleged wrongdoers to justice.

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Article: Barclays, RBS and others settle U$2bn currency-rigging lawsuits

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Barclays, RBS and others settle U$2bn currency-rigging lawsuits

Jonathan Jones, 14 August 2015

HSBC (LON:HSBA), Barclays (LON:BARC), Royal Bank of Scotland (LON:RBS) and two other banks settled on yet more payouts for currency-rigging.

The banks settled with US investors, agreeing to a payout which took the overall total paid to the investors to US$2bn (£1.28bn) from nine banks.

US heavyweight Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas also settled.

It’s another round of payouts after six banks, including Barclays and RBS were, in May, ordered to pay US$6bn (£3.84bn) by UK and US authorities.

At the time, Barclays was hit with the biggest bank fine in British history.

American investors claimed the banks joined together to manipulate the US$5.3trn a day foreign exchange market.

Legal firm Hausfeld, which represented the investors, said that the agreements were preliminary and subject to approval by US District Judge Lorna Schofield.

As yet, there has been no information on how the sum would be divided between the banks if passed.

“In addition to the billions of dollars in compensation, these settling banks have agreed to cooperate with investors in their continuing litigation” against other institutions, Hausfeld said.

The banks yet to settle are Standard Chartered (LON:STAN), Societe Generale, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, RBC Capital Markets, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley.

The US$2bn includes earlier settlements of US$800mln, with JPMorgan, Bank of America, UBS and Citigroup.

“While the recoveries here are tremendous, they are just the beginning,” said Hausfeld chairman Michael Hausfeld.

“Investors around the world should take note of the significant recoveries secured in the United States and recognize that these settlements cover a fraction of the world’s largest financial market,” he said.

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Article: FX collusion scandal reaches Australia, class action launched

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FX collusion scandal reaches Australia, class action launched

Byron Kaye, 27 May 2015

An Australian law firm filed a class action lawsuit on Monday against five major international investment banks accusing them of colluding to rig foreign exchange rates during 2008-2013 to jack up profits at the expense of businesses and investors.

The case involved some of the same banks caught up in similar currency market scandals in Europe and the United States.

UBS AG, Barclays Bank Plc, Citigroup Inc, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and JP Morgan AG are accused, according to Australian court documents, of colluding to increase the price clients paid for certain investment products in order to fix exchange rates at more costly levels. Continue reading “Article: FX collusion scandal reaches Australia, class action launched”

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Article: Barclays, Citicorp, JPMorgan, RBS, and UBS Enter Guilty Pleas Stemming from Collusion and Fraud in Foreign Exchange Market; Banks Agree to Pay More Than $5.8 Billion in Fines for Misconduct

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Barclays, Citicorp, JPMorgan, RBS, and UBS Enter Guilty Pleas Stemming from Collusion and Fraud in Foreign Exchange Market; Banks Agree to Pay More Than $5.8 Billion in Fines for Misconduct

GLOBE NEWSWIRE, 20 May 2015

Hausfeld, a global claimants’ firm dedicated to handling complex litigation, announced today that five defendants in In re Foreign Exchange Benchmark Rates Antitrust Litigation, 13-cv-7789 (S.D.N.Y.), have agreed with the U.S. Department of Justice to plead guilty to violating U.S. law through their conduct in the foreign exchange (“FX”) market. Barclays PLC, Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and The Royal Bank of Scotland PLC pled guilty to violating U.S. antitrust laws. UBS AG pled guilty to wire and mail fraud after the DOJ determined that UBS’s misconduct in the FX market had breached UBS’s prior non-prosecution agreement for LIBOR-related misconduct. The guilty pleas entered today reflect widespread collusion in the FX market over a period of several years.

In addition to the guilty pleas, the banks agreed to pay more than $2.7 billion to the Department of Justice to resolve the DOJ’s FX investigations. The Federal Reserve imposed further fines of more than $1.6 billion on affiliates of the same five banks and a fine of $205 million on Bank of America Corporation for “unsafe and unsound practices.” Barclays will also pay a $1.3 billion fine as part of settlements with the New York Department of Financial Services, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Financial Conduct Authority. Continue reading “Article: Barclays, Citicorp, JPMorgan, RBS, and UBS Enter Guilty Pleas Stemming from Collusion and Fraud in Foreign Exchange Market; Banks Agree to Pay More Than $5.8 Billion in Fines for Misconduct”

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Article: Four Banks Plead Guilty To Foreign Exchange Collusion, UBS Pleads Guilty To Wire Fraud

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Four Banks Plead Guilty To Foreign Exchange Collusion, UBS Pleads Guilty To Wire Fraud

Antoine Gara, 20 May 2015

U.S. banking giants Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase and U.K.-base conglomerates Barclays and The Royal Bank of Scotland have agreed to plead guilty antitrust violations stemming from their collusion to manipulate prices in the foreign exchange market over the course of five years, the Department of Justice said on Wednesday. Those banks and UBS have agreed to pay a total of $5.8 billion in fines to global regulators as part of their FX market collusion.

Five banks will pay the Department of Justice nearly $3 billion in fines and penalties for their manipulation of U.S. dollar and Euro exchange rates, which the DoJ characterized as occurring “almost every day for five years” through private chat rooms, benefiting their trading positions but harming countless consumers and investors around the world. Separately, the Federal Reserve said on Wednesday, six banks would pay a total of $1.8 billion in fines for “unsafe and unsound practices” in the FX market. Continue reading “Article: Four Banks Plead Guilty To Foreign Exchange Collusion, UBS Pleads Guilty To Wire Fraud”

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Article: UBS pays $545m to settle foreign exchange probe

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UBS pays $545m to settle foreign exchange probe

BBC News, 20 May 2015

Swiss bank UBS has paid US authorities a total of $545m (£352m) to settle an investigation into the manipulation of foreign exchange rates.

The total includes a $203m fine after UBS pleaded guilty to a charge it rigged Libor benchmark interest rates. UBS announced the move hours before US and UK authorities said five banks were to pay fines totalling $5.7bn related to the foreign exchange investigation.

The others are JPMorgan, Citigroup, Barclays and RBS. UBS said it had settled with the US Department of Justice, the US Federal Reserve and the Connecticut Department of Banking. Continue reading “Article: UBS pays $545m to settle foreign exchange probe”

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