Banks Fined $5.7 Billion Over Foreign Exchange Market Rigging
May 23rd, 2015And nobody goes to jail.
Via: Evening Standard:
Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland were among six banks to be fined a total of $5.7 billion (£3.8 billion) by British and US regulators over allegations that they rigged the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market.
The settlement, which also involved US banks JP Morgan, Bank of America and Citi, as well as Switzerland’s UBS, means banks have handed authorities around $10 billion to deal with the scandal.
Barclays, Citi, JPMorgan and RBS also all pleaded guilty to a US antitrust violation.
The affair follows a series of scandals, including the fixing of benchmark interest rate Libor, that have severely damaged the public’s perception of the banking industry.
FX traders were said to have come together in chatrooms with names like “The Cartel” or “The Bandits Club” to organise methods to influence the value of major currencies in the hope of inflating their profits.
“If you aint cheating, you aint trying,” one Barclays trader said in a chatroom.
