RBS, Barclays among banks fined by Swiss regulator for rate rigging

21st Dec 2016 09:19

(ShareCast News) - Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays were among the banks fined CHF99m (£78m) by the Swiss competition regulator for interest rate rigging in four separate cartels.The regulator, COMCO, also fined US banks JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale and Credit Suisse.Barclays was hit with a CHF29.8m (£23.5m) fine for colluding to influence interest rate derivatives by manipulating Euribor, having participated in a cartel for 32 months, while RBS took a CHF12.3m (£9.7m) hit for its part in the cartel, which lasted eight months.Deutsche Bank received full immunity for revealing the existence of the cartel to COMCO, while the other banks received reductions in their respective fines for cooperating with the investigation."The cartel aimed at distorting the normal course of pricing components for interest rate derivatives in euro. Traders of different banks occasionally discussed their bank's submissions for the calculation of the Euribor as well as their trading and pricing strategies," the regulator said.A separate probe found that JPMorgan and RBS ran a bilateral cartel to influence the Swiss franc Libor benchmark rate between March 2008 and July 2009.RBS received full immunity for revealing the existence of the cartel, while JP Morgan was hit with a CHF33.9m fine.Citigroup, Deutsche, JP Morgan and RBS also incurred fines for their part in yen Libor and euroyen Tibor cartels.At 0942 GMT, RBS shares were up 0.9% to 228.40p and Barclays shares were down 0.4% to 226.75p.