Brazil’s antitrust body announced an unprecedented probe for the nation into alleged foreign-exchange market rigging by 15 banks, including Citigroup Inc and HSBC Holdings PLC, which are accused of colluding to form a secret cartel.
“There are strong indications of anticompetitive practices of price-fixing” and other manipulations between the banks, the Brazilian Council for Economic Defense (CADE) said late on Thursday. The alleged cheating is thought to have lasted from 2007 until at least 2013, authorities said.
“The evidence shows that [the banks] formed a cartel” fixing prices, coordinating trades and impeding other operators involved in the Brazilian market, the watchdog said.
There is also evidence that the banks shared sensitive information on contracts, futures prices, clients, negotiating strategies and other confidential material, CADE said.
Brazilian investigators said the banks under scrutiny communicated online via a Bloomberg chat platform to organize what they themselves referred to as “the cartel” and “the mafia.”
The other banks included Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd, Barclays PLC, Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Bank of America Merrill Lynch Corp, Nomura Holdings Inc and UBS AG.
The probe also targets 30 individuals who were not identified.
One firm under investigation signed a cooperation pledge, providing information as it seeks to avoid punishment or at least win leniency, according to CADE superintendent Eduardo Frade Rodrigues, who did not identify the company.
Penalties could amount to as much as 20 percent of revenue from operations involved, according to CADE, which did not elaborate on how that would be defined.
No Brazilian banks were named in the investigation, which was the first of its kind by Brazil.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained