FCA Triggers Penalties On Five Banks With £1.1 Billion Fine Whilst Saving a Bullet for Barclays

Wednesday, 12/11/2014 | 07:41 GMT by George Tchetvertakov

The british regulator's arduous year-long forex rigging investigation has concluded with fines for Citibank, HSBC, JP Morgan, RBS and UBS for "undermining confidence in the UK financial system."

FCA Triggers Penalties On Five Banks With £1.1 Billion Fine Whilst Saving a Bullet for Barclays

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) ), the UK's financial regulator, has announced fines totaling £1.1 billion ($1.7 billion) for five prominent banks for ineffective controls among foreign Exchange traders between January 1, 2008 and October 15, 2013.

The five banks facing fines for "failing to control business practises" in their spot FX trading operations are: Citibank (£226 million), HSBC (£216 million), JP Morgan (£222 million), Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) £217 million) and UBS (£233 million).

bank pie — Break down of FCA Fines for FX Manipulation - Barclays Not Included

In a statement the FCA said, "The failings at these Banks undermine confidence in the UK financial system and put its integrity at risk." Furthermore, the FCA intends on "launching an industry-wide remediation programme to ensure firms address the root causes of these failings and drive up standards across the market."

Attentive readers would have noticed the absence of Barclays from the above list of scolded banks. This is because the FCA is applying specific focus and concentration on Barclays... "We will progress our investigation into that firm [Barclays] which will cover its G10 spot FX trading business and also wider FX business areas."

Potentially a scolding of a higher magnitude.

More to follow...