The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced it has reached settlements in separate cases with four international banks in relation to its investigation into the sharing of sensitive information.

The regulator was looking into allegations that bank employees had unlawfully shared “competitively sensitive’”information about the trading of UK bonds, also known as gilts, between 2010 and 2013.

The competition watchdog has now said it has “issued five separate infringement decisions finding that five pairs of banks broke competition law by unlawfully sharing competitively sensitive information, and imposed fines totalling over £100 million. The unlawful exchanges occurred in separate online Bloomberg chatrooms between individual traders at two banks at a time on various dates between 2009 to 2013.”

The five banks include Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Morgan Stanley and the Royal Bank of Canada.

Deutsche Bank has not been fined as it “alerted the CMA to its participation in the unlawful conduct,” and has been spared “under the CMA’s leniency policy .”

Also, Citi had applied for a leniency during the investigation, after admitting to its involvement in anti-competitive activity. It has therefore received a discounted fine.

£100m in fines

Four banks – Citi, HSBC, Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Canada – have settled and agreed to pay fines totalling £104,460,000m ($132m).

• Citi: £17,160,000 ($21,691,098) – this includes a 35% leniency discount and a 20% reduction for settling in advance of the CMA issuing the Statement of Objections;
• HSBC: £23,400,000 ($29,578,770) – this includes a 10% reduction for settling after the CMA issued the Statement of Objections;
• Morgan Stanley: £29,700,000 ($37,542,285) – this includes a 10% reduction for settling after the CMA issued the Statement of Objections;
• Royal Bank of Canada: £34,200,000 ($43,230,510) – this includes a 10% reduction for settling after the CMA issued the Statement of Objections.

Both Citi and Deutsche Bank seem to have benefited from their early admission of involvement in unlawful financial misconduct, and for agreeing to fulfil the terms of the settlement.

“Since then, the banks have implemented extensive compliance measures to ensure this behaviour does not happen again,” the CMA has said in a statement.

Juliette Enser, Executive Director of Competition Enforcement at the CMA, said: “The fines imposed today reflect the CMA’s commitment to dealing with competition law breaches and deterring anti-competitive conduct.”