The EU antitrust authorities have fined Credit Suisse and three major British banks a total of 344 million euros. According to Thursday, the supervisors accuse the institutes of collusion in foreign exchange trading. HSBC was imposed the highest fine with 174.3 million euros, followed by Credit Suisse with 83.3 million euros, Barclays with 54.3 million and RBS with 32.5 million euros. Barclays, HSBC and RBS admitted their wrongdoing and received reduced sentences in return. After being renamed last year, RBS is now called NatWest.
Credit Suisse did not want to comment. The major Swiss bank announced in March that it had not engaged in anti-competitive behavior in foreign exchange trading. UBS was waived the € 94 million fine for informing the European Commission about the cartel. "This is a legacy and UBS was the first bank to report potential misconduct," said a spokesman. "We are happy to have settled this matter."
The fines are the latest fines imposed on banks around the world for market manipulation, totaling billions of euros.
Banks had to pay around 1.3 billion euros for manipulating the Euribor rates.
"Today we are concluding our sixth antitrust investigation into the financial sector since 2013 and ending the third part of our investigation into the foreign exchange spot market," said EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.