Swiss UBS faces fine over alleged precious metals trading wrongdoing
Swiss bank giant UBS (NYSE:UBS), the world’s largest private lender, is about to reach a settlement in the year-long global probe into allegations of misconduct at its precious metals trading business, as well as supposed collusion and manipulation in the foreign exchange market.
The bank, FT.com reports, is just one of the six financial institutions expected to announce an agreement of at least $2.37 billion (£1.5bn) in fines on Wednesday to settle accusations of foreign exchange market rigging with the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
The other five banks working on the settlement are U.S. banks JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM) and Citigroup (NYSE:C); Britain’s HSBC (LON:HSBA) and Barclays (LON:HSBA), and Royal Bank of Scotland (LON:RBS).
Several U.S. authorities are also expected to be part of the settlement, with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission could announce a settlement with a group of banks some time this week.
No guilty parties … yet
So far close to 35 traders have been suspended or fired by their banks. No individual or institution has so far been accused of any wrongdoing.
Regulators across the globe are investigating up to 15 different banks over their roles in the scandal.
Earlier this year FCA chief executive Martin Wheatley said that the currency rigging scandal was “every bit as bad” as the manipulation of Libor, the key global interest rate used to price loans, mortgages and set returns on investment products.
UBS has previously disclosed that it launched an internal probe of its precious metals business in addition to its forex investigation.
This is not the first time this year a bank receives a fine for its manipulation of precious metal prices. In May, the U.K. authority fined Barclays $44 million in May after an options trader was found to have manipulated the London gold fix.
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6 Comments
roger
Is anyone really surprised the metals are manipulated by legal looking crooks ?
Guest
The widespread nature of Gold Price riggings by crooked traders is indeed surprising, and many more fines are to be expected according to the above article! These unfolding developments will be very bullish for Gold price going forward from here. This is indeed a Milestone Event, that solidifies the “one-Day-Key-Reversal” that Jim Wykoff of http://www.kitco.com identified on Friday Nov 7, 2014 trading when Gold traded lower than the previous day, but closed higher than that previous day and on its absolute Highs of $1178 per ounce which is UP $37 on Nov 7, 2014 . “Free at last !” Nov 9, 2014 at 1:19 pm PST.
alan
The population of Switzerland need to vote yes for the gold referendum this month,the greed of the bankers and politicians is unbelievable
pichler1508 .
This is a big game including the authorities. You make a profit of 1000 with crime and pay a fine of 10. Banks profit and fired people profit (they got their huge bonus) and authorities profit by getting the fines and later well paid jobs at the banks for their contribution. When well it stop? Top management has to go to jail, banks have to compensate the victims not the government and officers of authorities are allowed to take jobs at banks after 5 years waiting period. No one has an incentive for doing crime. This I believe how it is and how it could be stopped. Will it ever stop? No way with so many winners in the game.
I hope so much that Swiss people are clever and vote for getting their Gold back. Swiss is the only country in the world where democracy isn’t rigged. In other countries you have no choice and no power as the parties and the elite shares the power no matter what the people vote.
Anyway, people are kept calm by governments by games (eg dancing stars) and bread (social support) and so it will continue until no bread is available for distribution.
ManoleteSTHLM
I certainly hope that the Swiss people will vote yes to sound money at the 30th of november – that’ll send a message. Although I suspect that the mainstream media/politicans and banks in Switzerland will project threats and doom going off the already, in real life, doomed path of excessive moneyprinting. It’s a charade to see UBS and other criminals manipulate Libor, Forex and gold.
Nicolas
It seems that these bank know when gold is going to be manipulated downward before hand. They make such firm calls. This is collusion, corruption and insider trading is of the highest order.