Minor updates on the banking fiascos: Forex settlements and a new fiasco

Settlements of private lawsuits are continuing. Also, settlements with CFTC underway for another rate manipulation scheme.

6/18 – Wall Street Journal – Banks’ Civil Forex Settlements Near $2 Billion/ Barclays, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs and HSBC recently signed agreements to settle case  – The settlements for private litigation over manipulation of foreign exchange rates are moving forward. Article says HSBC has settled up for $285M, Barclays for $375M, Goldman Sachs is in for $129.5M, and an unknown amount for BNP.

By my calculation that brings the total for seven banks to $1.9 billion, with PNB, RBS, Deutsche bank and Credit Suisse still to settle, based on my notes. I’ll guess another half billion for the remaining four. Maybe $800M.

That brings the total paid to date up to $12.37B for forex.

6/18 – Wall Street Journal – Regulators Near Pacts to Settle U.S. Rate Probes / CFTC is weighing punishments against several banks and broker ICAP  – In a completely different scheme to manipulate the market, a huge brokerage firm named ICAP PLC is accused of manipulating the ISDAFix swap rate. The accusation is the broker worked with large numbers of their big bank customers to manipulate the benchmark.

The brokerage firm announced last month it has incurred $6.22M in legal fees, according to the article. Barclays settled up with CFTC for $115M after accusations their traders had been manipulating the rate starting in 2007 and running through 2012.

Article doesn’t say how many other banks are involved, but indicates a dozen banks have been under investigation. I’ll make a wild guess the roster will look what we have seen in the LIBOR and forex manipulation fiascos.

Article suggests the settlements will be in the low hundreds of millions each.

Looks like I need to start another spreadsheet to keep track of the players for this scandal and each of their fines.

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