Goldman Sachs to Pay $110 Million to Settle Forex Case
May 01 2018 - 5:15PM
Dow Jones News
By Ira Iosebashvili
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will pay roughly $110 million to settle
claims that it failed to supervise foreign exchange traders who put
clients at a disadvantage by inappropriately sharing information
about their market positions with rivals.
The firm will make payments of $54.75 million to both the
Federal Reserve Board and the New York Department of Financial
Services, the regulators said Tuesday.
Between 2008 and early 2013, the bank's traders used electronic
chat rooms to share confidential customer information and to
discuss potentially coordinating trading activity, the New York
agency said.
"This improper activity sought to enable banks and the involved
traders to achieve higher profits from execution of foreign
exchange trades, sometimes at customers' expense," it said.
The traders adjusted prices for particular securities and
assisted other banks' traders by providing confidential information
about Goldman Sachs's clients or their orders, sometimes giving
customers code names such as "fiddler" and "dodgy aussie seller,"
the DFS said.
While the bank had policies addressing its foreign exchange
business in place as early as 2001, "escalation of compliance
concerns did not always occur as required, allowing potentially
improper trading activity to continue."
The individuals that had participated in the improper trading
are no longer with the firm, according to a person with knowledge
of the matter.
"We are pleased to have resolved the Federal Reserve Board's and
New York Department of Financial Services' respective reviews and
appreciate their recognition that we have already taken significant
steps to enhance our policies and procedures," Goldman Sachs
said.
The fines come after a string of actions against banks over the
past several years. Five banks -- Barclays PLC, Citigroup Inc.,
JPMorgan Chase & Co., Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and UBS
AG -- pleaded guilty in May 2015 and paid $5.6 billion in penalties
to resolve investigations into whether the banks worked together to
manipulate foreign currency prices.
In a separate case that grew out of the investigations,
prosecutors in July charged two HSBC Holdings PLC employees with
fraudulently front-running a $3.5 billion currency trade for a
client. The HSBC traders have pleaded not guilty.
--Telis Demos contributed to this article.
Write to Ira Iosebashvili at ira.iosebashvili@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 01, 2018 17:00 ET (21:00 GMT)
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