UBS, UniCredit, Nomura lose court fight against EU bond cartel decision

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -UBS on Wednesday lost an initial court challenge against a 172.4-million-euro ($186 million) EU cartel fine as Europe's second-top court largely sided with a decision by EU antitrust regulators.

The European Commission in its 2021 decision, which had imposed a total fine of 371 million euros ($400 million), said the cartel, which also included Bank of America, RBS (now known as NatWest), Natixis and WestLB (now known as Portigon), ran from 2007 to 2011.

UniCredit's and Nomura's fines were trimmed in the court decision on Wednesday.

The Luxembourg-based General Court said it "largely confirms the decision of the (European) Commission" but also "moderately reduces the amount of the fines imposed on UniCredit and Nomura".

"Any anticompetitive conduct on the part of an employee is attributable to the undertaking to which he or she belongs. Accordingly, banks are liable for the conduct of their traders," judges said.

The EU antitrust decision had said that traders from the banks exchanged information on prices and volumes offered in the run-up to the auctions and the prices being shown to their customers or to the market in general via multilateral chatrooms on Bloomberg terminals.

All the banks except for NatWest, which alerted the cartel to the authorities, subsequently challenged the EU decision at the Luxembourg-based General Court, Europe's second-highest.

Nomura's 129.6 million euro fine was trimmed to 125.6 million and UniCredit's 69.4 million euro penalty cut to 65 million.

The EU competition watchdog had not fined Bank of America and Natixis because their infringement fell outside the limitation period for imposition of fines, while Portigon's fine was reduced to zero because it did not have any net turnover in the last business year.

The banks/Commission can appeal only on points of law to the Court of Justice of the European Union, Europe's highest.

European and U.S. regulators have imposed billions of euros in fines on the banking sector in the last two decades for activities that included the rigging of various benchmark indices.

The cases are -441/21 UBS Group et UBS v Commission, T-449/21 Natixis v Commission, T-453/21 UniCredit and UniCredit Bank v Commission, T-455/21 Nomura International et Nomura Holdings v Commission, T-456/21 Bank of America and Bank of America Corporation and T-462/21 Portigon v Commission (European government bonds).

($1 = 0.9266 euros)

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee. Editing by Jane Merriman)