U.S. Prosecutors Investigating At Least 10 Banks For Gold And Silver Manipulation
Stephen Morris
GovtSlaves.com
Aug. 226, 2015
European Union antitrust regulators are investigating precious-metals trading following a U.S. probe that embroiled some of the world’s biggest banks.
The European Commission disclosed the review after HSBC Holdings Plc said in a filing earlier this month that it had received a request for information from the EU in April. The watchdog is examining possible anti-competitive behavior in spot trading, Ricardo Cardoso, a spokesman for the regulator, said in an e-mail.
“This is just another potential scandal where fines will suppress banks’ earnings, and rightly so,” said Sandy Chen, a London-based banking analyst at Cenkos Securities Plc.
U.S. prosecutors have been examining whether at least 10 banks, including Barclays Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Deutsche Bank AG, manipulated prices of precious metals such as silver and gold. The scrutiny follows international probes into the rigging of financial benchmarks for rates and currencies, which have yielded billions of dollars in fines.
The trio was among financial companies that agreed in an EU settlement to pay a total of 1.7 billion euros ($1.9 billion) in December 2013 for colluding over derivatives linked to the London and euro interbank offered rates. HSBC remains under investigation in the Euribor case after refusing to join the accord.
HSBC ‘Cooperating’
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