By Edith Hancock
The European Union's general court largely backed the European Commission's decision to fine UBS, Nomura and UniCredit in connection with a European government bonds cartel.
The EU executive fined UBS, Nomura and UniCredit a collective 371 million euros ($400.4 million) in 2021. It said traders from seven banks used Bloomberg terminal chat rooms between 2007 and 2011 to exchange commercially sensitive information including on their prices and volumes offered in the run-up to member states' auctions. The banks later tried to get their penalties cancelled at the lower court.
Judges in the first court on Wednesday said they found that one single and continuous antitrust infringement of EU competition law had occurred and that the traders' exchanges of commercially sensitive information, price-fixing, market sharing and customer allocation were harmful to competition. It also found that banks are liable for their traders' conduct.
They did, however, lower fines for Nomura and UniCredit, saying that officials made an error in how Nomura's fine was calculated and didn't correctly assess when UniCredit became part of the cartel.
Nomura--which originally fielded a 129.57 million-euro fine in 2021--had its penalty reduced to 125.65 million euros. UniCredit's was lowered to 65 million euros from 69.44 million euros.
A spokesperson for UBS said the bank will evaluate the decision and consider whether to file an appeal.
Nomura declined to comment and UniCredit didn't immediately responded to a request for comment.
Write to Edith Hancock at edith.hancock@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 26, 2025 07:30 ET (11:30 GMT)
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