FCA Fines Five Major Banks GBP 1.1 Bln For Failings To Control FX Trading

(RTTNews) - The Financial Conduct Authority or FCA Wednesday said it has imposed fines totaling about 1.115 billion pounds or about $1.7 billion on five banks for failing to control business practices in their G10 spot foreign exchange or FX trading operations.

The affected banks include Swiss banking giant UBS AG (UBS), British lenders HSBC Holdings Plc (HBC, HSBA.L), and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS, RBS.L) as well as US financial giants JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Citigroup, Inc. (C).

The FCA fined Citibank N.A. about 225.575 million pounds or about $358 million, HSBC about 216.363 million pounds or $343 million, JPMorgan about 222.166 million or $352 million, Royal Bank of Scotland about 217 million pounds or $344 million and UBS about 233.814 million pounds or $371 million.

In relation to Barclays Bank Plc (BARC.L, BCS), the authority said it will progress investigation into that firm which will cover its G10 spot FX trading business and also wider FX business areas.

According to FCA, the G10 spot FX market is a systemically important financial market, and the the failings at these Banks undermine confidence in the UK financial system and put its integrity at risk. These failings allowed traders at those Banks to behave unacceptably. They shared information about clients' activities which they had been trusted to keep confidential and attempted to manipulate G10 spot FX currency rates.