Competition record
Barclays
Deep profile · 1 linked library matter
Barclays is a British bank with a large foreign-exchange trading business. Traders in chat rooms coordinated around the WM/Reuters fix, and the EU forex case records Barclays as fined.
Overview
Barclays is a London-based bank. It takes deposits and lends through a retail and corporate bank, and it runs a markets business that deals in currencies for clients and for the bank's own book. The WM/Reuters fix is a published snapshot of exchange rates, widely used to price funds, contracts, and client orders.
From roughly 2007 to 2013, traders at major banks used chat rooms to share information about client orders and to coordinate trading into that fix. The aim was to move the published benchmark in a direction that helped the desks. Barclays is one of the banks in the library's EU forex file, with Citigroup and JPMorgan.
The European Commission and national authorities imposed fines. The library status is fined. This profile does not state Barclays' own fine or a combined total.
Competition footprint
The fix is a reference rate, so moving it changes the price on contracts that point at it.
Chat-room coordination among competing dealing desks is the conduct the case records.
Commission and national fines are the outcome, without a figure repeated here.
Consumer & business angle
Asset managers, companies, and funds that used the WM/Reuters fix were the customers of the benchmark.
Other banks' spot dealers were the rivals in the chat rooms.
What to watch
- Surveillance of trader chat around benchmark windows.
- Damages claims that use the EU forex decision as the finding of coordination.
Markets
foreign exchange · retail and investment banking · foreign exchange spot · currency benchmarks
Also known as: barclays bank