The European Commission fined a number of large banks for cartel conspiracy

The European Commission fined five banks for participating in cartel agreements in the foreign exchange market. The first decision (“Forex - Three way Banana Split”) imposed a fine of € 811,197,000 on Barclays, The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Citigroup and JPMorgan; in the second (“Forex-Essex Express”) - a fine of 257,682,000 euros for Barclays, RBS and MUFG Bank.

UBS Bank was also a conspiracy member, but was not held liable because it was a sender of information on a cartel agreement.

The Commission's investigation showed that some individual traders responsible for spot trading of the most common currencies (dollars, euros, pounds, yens, Swiss francs, Canadian, New Zealand, Australian dollars, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian kroner) exchanged Forex on behalf of the respective banks confidential information and trading plans, coordinated their trading strategies through various professional online chats.

The commercially confidential information exchanged in these chats is related to:

1) unpaid customer orders (i.e., the amount that the client wanted to exchange, the specific currencies involved, as well as an indication of which client was involved in the transaction);

2) buy and sell spreads (prices) applicable to specific transactions;

3) their open risk positions (the currency they needed to sell or buy in order to convert their portfolios into the currency of their bank);

4) other details of current or planned trading activities.

The exchange of information allowed participants to accept informed market agreements for the purchase and sale of the currency available in their investment portfolios.

Most of the chat traders knew each other personally - for example, one of the chats was called Essex Express and Jimmy because all traders except James lived in Essex and met by train to London. Some of the traders created chats, and then invited each other to join, based on their trading activities and personal preferences, creating closed confidential circles.

On materials of the following website: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-2568_en.htm