Big fines Wednesday morning on five big investment banks from US and UK financial regulators for transatlantic currency trading collusion:
It’s another dark day for the banking sector, with several of the world’s biggest financial institutions being fined for their role in rigging the global foreign exchange market.
…regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have announced fines totalling around £2bn, or $3.1bn, against HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS, JP Morgan and Citigroup.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority [FCA] has imposed fines totalling £1.1bn, and America’s [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] CFTC has imposed fines of an additional $1.4bn, (£900m).
All five banks have been penalised because their staff colluded to fix the official rates at which currencies were trading against each other in the international markets.
I’m sure they still probably made a lot more money off the collusion and manipulations than they’re being fined, but at least there’s a bit of justice.
But the real takeaway? Good lord, even Britain’s financial regulators at the FCA produce better videos (watch below) than Americans do. It’s like a dry BBC comedy but for white collar crime. Somehow they manage to make an incredibly dull description of illegal transaction activities into a gripping and funny set of infographics and deadpan reading of curse-filled chat transcripts by bankers.
