EU fines 8 major banks record 1.7bn euro for rigging rates

The European Commission has slapped record fines of 1.7 billion euro on eight major banks for manipulating lending rates that play a key role in the global economy. The penalties will add to already escalating costs for leading global lenders.

The EU fines marks the latest to be levied on banks and financial institutions for making profits or masking their problems by fraudulently rigging the rates that reflect the cost of lending money to each other.

The banks fined are Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, JPMorgan, Barclays, Societe Generale, UBS and RP Martin, the EC said in a statement.

The borrowing rates involved – the London interbank offered rate (Libor), the Tokyo and the euro area equivalents – are used to set price of trillions of dollars of financial products, ranging from mortgages to derivatives.

“What is shocking about the Libor and Euribor scandals is not only the manipulation of benchmarks, which is being tackled by financial regulators worldwide, but also the collusion between banks who are supposed to be competing with each other,” said Joaquín Almunia, European Commission Vice-President in charge of competition policy.

“Today’s decision sends a clear message that the Commission is determined to fight and sanction these cartels in the financial sector,” Almunia said in the EC statement. “Healthy competition and transparency are crucial for financial markets to work properly, at the service of the real economy rather than the interests of a few.”

The EC ruling said that the fine for each lender was calculated on the basis of the level of its involvement in the manipulations and how well it was cooperating with the investigation.

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