Record fines for currency market fix Five of th
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Posted On: 05/20/2015 7:28:03 PM
Record fines for currency market fix
Five of the world's largest banks are to pay fines totalling $5.7bn
(£3.6bn) for charges including manipulating the foreign exchange market.
Four of the banks - JPMorgan, Barclays, Citigroup and RBS - have agreed to plead guilty to US criminal charges.
The fifth, UBS, will plead guilty to rigging benchmark interest rates.
Barclays was fined the most, $2.4bn, as it did not join other banks in November to settle investigations by UK, US and Swiss regulators.
Barclays is also sacking eight employees involved in the scheme.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that "almost every day" for five years from 2007, currency traders used a private electronic chat room to manipulate exchange rates.
Their actions harmed "countless consumers, investors and institutions around the world", she said.
Separately, the Federal Reserve fined a sixth bank, Bank of America, $205m over foreign exchange-rigging. All the other banks were fined by both the Department of Justice and the Federal Reserve.
Cartel threat
Regulators said that between 2008 and 2012, several traders formed a cartel and used chat rooms to manipulate prices in their favour.
One Barclays trader who was invited to join the cartel was told: "Mess up and sleep with one eye open at night."
Several strategies were used to manipulate prices and a common scheme was to influence prices around the daily fixing of currency levels.
A daily exchange rate fix is held to help businesses and investors value their multi-currency assets and liabilities.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said traders had colluded for five years
Five of the world's largest banks are to pay fines totalling $5.7bn
(£3.6bn) for charges including manipulating the foreign exchange market.
Four of the banks - JPMorgan, Barclays, Citigroup and RBS - have agreed to plead guilty to US criminal charges.
The fifth, UBS, will plead guilty to rigging benchmark interest rates.
Barclays was fined the most, $2.4bn, as it did not join other banks in November to settle investigations by UK, US and Swiss regulators.
Barclays is also sacking eight employees involved in the scheme.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that "almost every day" for five years from 2007, currency traders used a private electronic chat room to manipulate exchange rates.
Their actions harmed "countless consumers, investors and institutions around the world", she said.
Separately, the Federal Reserve fined a sixth bank, Bank of America, $205m over foreign exchange-rigging. All the other banks were fined by both the Department of Justice and the Federal Reserve.
Cartel threat
Regulators said that between 2008 and 2012, several traders formed a cartel and used chat rooms to manipulate prices in their favour.
One Barclays trader who was invited to join the cartel was told: "Mess up and sleep with one eye open at night."
Several strategies were used to manipulate prices and a common scheme was to influence prices around the daily fixing of currency levels.
A daily exchange rate fix is held to help businesses and investors value their multi-currency assets and liabilities.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said traders had colluded for five years
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