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($12.75 million) 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.
A spokesperson for Credit Agricole said it acknowledged the decision and was considering whether to appeal. “The fine was already paid and will therefore have no impact on our future results,” the bank said.
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.
($1 = 0.9333 euros)
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; additional reporting by Mathieu Rosemain; Editing by Louise Heavens and Sharon Singleton)
