Labor Department Grants Banks Multiyear Waivers to Manage Retirement Plans
December 28 2017 - 5:00PM
Dow Jones News
By Andrew Ackerman
WASHINGTON -- Five global banks, including JPMorgan Chase &
Co. and Citigroup Inc., can continue managing corporate retirement
plans in the wake of recent guilty pleas to criminal charges, under
new waivers announced by the Trump administration on Thursday.
The waivers, set by the Labor Department, are the latest fallout
of the banks' criminal convictions in market-manipulation schemes,
which the firms collectively paid billions of dollars to settle in
recent years. Without the waivers, the banks' asset-management
units would have been disqualified from managing retirement plans
under U.S. law, even though the misconduct in question occurred in
other areas of each of the banks.
The relief allows each of the firms to continue managing
pensions plans and individual-retirement accounts, a significant
source of business for each of the firms.
In addition to JPMorgan and Citigroup, the waivers also apply to
units of Barclays PLC, UBS Group AG and Deutsche Bank AG.
The Obama administration, in its waning days, approved one-year
waivers for each of the banks and proposed granting the firms
five-year reprieves from the restrictions.
Thursday's move by the Trump administration completes those
longer-term waivers, though it struck a tougher posture than its
predecessors: two of the banks, Deutsche Bank and UBS, will only
receive three-year waivers. The administration said that it
shortened the waivers for those two firms because they had more
than one criminal conviction.
Spokesmen for J.P. Morgan, Barclays and Deutsche Bank declined
to comment. Spokesmen for UBS and Citigroup didn't immediately
respond to a request for comment.
Write to Andrew Ackerman at andrew.ackerman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 28, 2017 16:45 ET (21:45 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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