US regulators yesterday fined Swiss bank UBS US$342 million for manipulation of foreign exchange markets, as other global lenders prepared for even larger penalties.
Five major banks, including UBS, will pay fines totaling billions of dollars for rigging the foreign exchange (forex) market in settlements all expected to be unveiled yesterday by US and British regulators.
Penalties will range from the hundreds of millions of dollars to US$1 billion or more, depending on a bank’s involvement in the scheme, according to people familiar with the talks.
Regulators have accused the banks of conspiring to manipulate the US$5.3 trillion per day forex market in ways that cheated clients and bolstered their own profits.
UBS is to pay a US$342-million penalty to the US Federal Reserve and change the way its foreign exchange system works, the bank said in the first wave of expected announcements on fines.
However, at the same time, the US Department of Justice has dropped charges against UBS into the currency rigging probe, and granted it conditional immunity for cooperating with the authorities, the bank said in a statement.
UBS’ role in the forex affair means that a 2012 non-prosecution agreement between the bank and the justice department over manipulating LIBOR benchmark interest rates has been revoked.
UBS said that it will plead guilty to fraud in the US over the LIBOR interest rate-rigging scandal and pay US$203 million in fresh fines.
US, British and Swiss regulators fined UBS the equivalent of US$1.5 billion in 2012 for its part in manipulating the LIBOR rate, a global reference that affects products from student loans to mortgages.
BIG NAMES
The other banks set to be hit by fines linked to the forex scandal are US giants JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup and British lenders Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland.
The steep penalties are expected from Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority, the US Department of Justice, the US Federal Reserve, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the New York Department of Financial Services.
Traders used instant messages and online chats to share information about clients and plot trades which regulators have said resulted in boosting bank profits at the expense of clients.
BARCLAYS’ FINE
Barclays is expected to be hit with possibly the largest fine after it was left out of a US$4.2 billion settlement that the other four banks, along with HSBC and Bank of America, reached in November last year with US and British regulators over forex market manipulation.
Barclays on April 29 announced it had set aside an additional £800 million (US$1.24 billion) for the foreign exchange case, taking the group’s total provision on the matter to £2.05 billion.
JPMorgan, Citigroup, Barclays and RBS are also expected to plead guilty to a US criminal antitrust charge.
A guilty plea typically restricts a bank’s operations in the US, but regulators have been working on waivers to ensure customers are not harmed, according to people familiar with the matter.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”