By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Credit Suisse, now part of UBS, and Credit Agricole on Wednesday lost their first challenges against million-euro fines issued by EU antitrust regulators in 2021 for taking part in a bond cartel.
The European Commission handed out a 11.9 million euro fine to Credit Suisse and a 3.9 million euro fine to Credit Agricole, saying the cartel operated in the European secondary trading market related to U.S. denominated supra-sovereign, sovereign and agency (SSA) bonds.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which also took part in the cartel, received a 12.6 million euro penalty while Deutsche Bank, which alerted the wrongdoing to the EU antitrust enforcer, avoided a 21.5-million-euro fine.
The Luxembourg-based General Court sided with the EU competition enforcer.
“The General Court of the European Union confirms the Commission’s finding of an infringement and maintains the amount of the fines imposed in 2021,” the tribunal said.
The banks can appeal on matters of law to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), Europe’s top court.
Traders at the four banks colluded on trading strategies, exchanged sensitive pricing information and coordinated on prices over five years via chatrooms on Bloomberg terminals, according to the Commission.
The financial sector has been hit with billion euro fines by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic in recent years for rigging financial benchmarks and taking part in foreign exchange cartels.
The cases are Judgments in Cases T-386/21 Credit Agricole and Credit agricole Corporate and Investment Bank v Commission and T-406/21 UBS Group and Credit Suisse Securities (Europe) v Commission.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, Editing by Louise Heavens)
