Tag: RBS

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Article: UK banks fined €1bn by EU for rigging foreign exchange market

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UK banks fined €1bn by EU for rigging foreign exchange market

Kalyeena Makortoff, 16 May 2019

Five banks including Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland have been fined more than €1bn (£875m) 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 commission’s penalty adds to the £1.3bn in fines imposed by the UK Financial Conduct Authority in 2014 over the same case. While the FCA’s penalty focused on the lender’s breach of regulations, the EU’s fine deals with how their behaviour dampened competition.

“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.

The banking industry has been hit with billions in fines worldwide over the last decade for rigging benchmarks used in many day-to-day financial transactions, and are now at risk of private lawsuits.

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Article: Goldman Sachs Fined $110 Million to Settle New York FX Probe

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Goldman Sachs Fined $110 Million to Settle New York FX Probe

Aziz Abdel-Qader, 01 May 2018

Goldman Sachs has been slapped with a $110 million fine by New York regulator and Federal Reserve in an antitrust lawsuit alleging that the bank’s traders routinely manipulated the forex market for their profit.

New York’s Department of Financial Services also ordered the investment bank to put in place a program to ensure that the alleged violation doesn’t happen again. However, Goldman is not required to hire an outside consultant to review its practices, a condition sometimes imposed on banks fined for compliance violations.

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The DFS said Goldman Sachs had insufficient oversight and controls over its FX traders, who allegedly discussed trading positions with competitors, using electronic chatrooms. The traders frequently tried to trade ahead of big foreign-exchange transactions by their clients, a practice known as front-running.

The order released Tuesday detailed multiple instances of improper behavior, which occurred from at least 2008 to 2015.

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Article: CREDIT SUISSE INTERNATIONAL HAS MARKET MANIPULATION LAWSUIT AGAINST IT DISMISSED

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CREDIT SUISSE INTERNATIONAL HAS MARKET MANIPULATION LAWSUIT AGAINST IT DISMISSED

MARIA NIKOLOVA, 26 March 2018

Credit Suisse International (CSI) has had the complaint against it dropped in a case targeting a number of primary dealers of US Treasuries. The order, filed earlier today with the New York Southern District Court, was signed by Judge Paul Gardephe on March 23, 2018.

The order stipulates that CSI is no longer a party in the market manipulation case captioned Breakwater Trading LLC et al v. Bank Of America Corporation et al (1:17-cv-06497). The plaintiffs have voluntarily dismissed all claims against CSI without prejudice to reassert such claims against CSI at a later time should evidence arise in discovery or otherwise that reveals information providing a basis for joining CSI on the claims being litigated in this case. Continue reading “Article: CREDIT SUISSE INTERNATIONAL HAS MARKET MANIPULATION LAWSUIT AGAINST IT DISMISSED”

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Article: LIBOR, FX and Key Benchmark Rigging Claims against RBS, Barclays, HSBC & Lloyds set to Strengthen for Customers Mis-sold Derivatives

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LIBOR, FX and Key Benchmark Rigging Claims against RBS, Barclays, HSBC & Lloyds set to Strengthen for Customers Mis-sold Derivatives

Jaron Dosanjh, 09 March 2018

The door has been opened by the Court of Appeal in PAG v RBS [2018] for misrepresentation claims to be brought by a counter-party to a derivative which is linked to LIBOR, FX or key benchmark where the Swap is with a bank which has been found to have engaged in the manipulation of a benchmark.

This judgment is now the leading authority on claims concerning a customer’s ability to rescind contracts with a bank that has manipulated the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). Although this case focused on LIBOR-linked derivatives, the same principles will surely apply to other key benchmark rigging (including the manipulation of FX markets).

This decision will be of particular interest to customers that believe they have been mis-sold a Forex hedging products or a LIBOR-linked derivative. These customers of RBS, Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds Plc may potentially have grounds to rescind the derivative contract if the implied representations made by the banks are considered false due to regulatory findings of benchmark rigging. RBS, Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds Plc have all either undermined the integrity of LIBOR or have been fined for Forex failings.

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Article: Deutsche Bank Securities Fined $70 Million in Manipulation Case

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Deutsche Bank Securities Fined $70 Million in Manipulation Case

TOM BEMIS, 02 January 2018

Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., a unit of Deutsche Bank (DB) – Get Report , was fined $70 million as part of a settlement of charges by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that it attempted to manipulate a key foreign exchange benchmark.

The CFTC found that DBSI made false reports and sought to manipulate the U.S. Dollar International Swaps and Derivatives Association Fix, used as a daily reference in a wide variety of interest-rate products.

The manipulations between 2007 and 2012 sought to benefit DBSI’s derivative positions, the CFTC said in a statement. Continue reading “Article: Deutsche Bank Securities Fined $70 Million in Manipulation Case”

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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: 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: Six former UBS forex staff banned by Swiss watchdog

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Six former UBS forex staff banned by Swiss watchdog

Silke Koltrowitz, Steve Slater, Kirstin Ridley, 17 December 2015

Six former UBS managers and traders have been banned for up to five years for alleged manipulation of foreign exchange and precious metals markets in the first sanctions handed out by authorities in a global investigation. Continue reading “Article: Six former UBS forex staff banned by Swiss watchdog”

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Article: UK banks may face another £40 billion in fines for misconduct, Bank of England warns

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UK banks may face another £40 billion in fines for misconduct, Bank of England warns

Nick Goodway, 02 December 2015

British banks may see their bill for past misconduct rise by another £40 billion, the Bank of England has warned.

The figure, which was included in the central bank’s stress test results on Tuesday, is virtually double what banks have already set aside to cover the cost of historic crimes and misdemeanours.

The Bank explained that while the extra £40 billion was “not a central projection for future misconduct costs”, it had been arrived at using the best available information.

It said: “Bank staff have generated these ‘stressed’ estimates for additional misconduct costs drawing on information provided by participating banks as well as other sources – including, for example, public reports of legal proceedings involving potential bank misconduct issues.”

The stress test assumed that £30 billion of the extra misconduct charges would fall in the first two years of the five-year scenario played out in the simulation.

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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: RBS, Barclays, HSBC … it’s time to get out of coal!

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RBS, Barclays, HSBC … it’s time to get out of coal!

Greig Aitken BankTrack, 04 August 2015

In advance of the UN climate summit in Paris, campaign groups are urging the banking sector to take one concrete step towards combatting the climate crisis, and quit financing coal.

It is hard to think of a UK business sector in more dire need of an image boost than the banking sector. The UK’s three biggest banks – Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and HSBC – appear stuck on a never-ending, Escher-esque scandal treadmill of their own making.

Round and round they go, ripping off small businesses (RBS), enabling Latin American drug cartels to launder billions and orchestrating tax evasion in Switzerland (HSBC), and blatantly mis-selling payment protection insurance to vulnerable customers (Barclays).

This behaviour is of course accompanied by obscene bonuses that the same banks have still seen fit to churn out to staff as regularly as clockwork every year since the 2008 crash.

Reporting from outside RBS’s City of London headquarters in November last year as a further multi-bank scandal concerning illegal foreign exchange rate manipulation was breaking, the Economics Editor of Channel 4 News, Paul Mason, visibly fighting back the expletives, let rip on air:

“I’m just sick of it, after six years why do we have to keep coming to do it?”

He was referring to yet more time spent covering yet more market manipulation, with little in the way of effective sanctions being dished out to prevent it, Mason’s angst summed up the UK public’s views about the banks.

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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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