Our latest article “Competition authorities increase scrutiny in banking industry” by Togan Turan and G\u00fcl\u00e7in Dere is published on Lexology.<\/p>\n
In recent years, competition authorities have not only become more vigorous in investigating anti-trust claims in financial services, but also more diligent in imposing significant fines on banks. In a recent decision, the European Commission (EC) has imposed unprecedented fines of up to EUR 1.07 billion on Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Citigroup, JPMorgan and MUFG Bank (formerly Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi) for getting involved in a foreign exchange spot trading cartel1<\/sup>. One of the addressee of the decision, UBS, was however exempted from fines due to its cooperation with the EC under the EC\u2019s Leniency Program2<\/sup>.<\/p>\n After an extensive investigation, the EC found that competing Forex spot traders exchanged competitively sensitive information via various online professional chatrooms to coordinate their strategies on behalf of five banks3<\/sup>. The in-depth investigation revealed that there were two distinct cartels as part of the overall collusive behaviour in the market for Spot Foreign Exchange4<\/sup>. The first one, the so-called \u2018Forex-Three Way Banana Split\u2019<\/em> cartel involving Barclays, RBS, Citigroup and JPMorgan, lasted from December 2007 to January 2013, while the second one, known as the \u2018Forex- Essex Express\u2019<\/em> cartel, involved Barclays, RBS and MUFG Bank and extended from December 2009 to July 20125<\/sup>.<\/p>\n