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Investing.com -- The European Union’s general court has primarily supported the European Commission’s decision to fine UBS, Nomura, and UniCredit over their involvement in a European government-bonds cartel. The collective fine of 371 million euros ($400.4 million) was imposed on the three banks in 2021.
The Commission claimed that traders from seven banks had used Bloomberg terminal chat rooms from 2007 to 2011 to share commercially sensitive information, including prices and volumes offered in the lead-up to member states’ auctions. The banks later pursued to have their penalties cancelled at the lower court.
On Wednesday, the first court’s judges ruled that a single and continuous antitrust violation of EU competition law had transpired. They found that the traders’ exchanges of commercially sensitive information, price-fixing, market sharing, and customer allocation were detrimental to competition. The court also held that banks are responsible for their traders’ actions.
Nonetheless, the court did decrease the fines for Nomura and UniCredit. It stated that an error was made in calculating Nomura’s fine and that UniCredit’s involvement in the cartel was not accurately assessed. Nomura’s penalty, initially set at 129.57 million euros in 2021, was reduced to 125.65 million euros. UniCredit’s fine was lowered to 65 million euros from the original 69.44 million euros.
The banks still have the option to appeal the penalty at the European Union’s Court of Justice, the bloc’s highest court.
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