All Announced on One Day: Five Banks Fined for FX, One for Precious Metals and BOE Chief FX Dealer Fired

As had been rumored for a few weeks, FX settlements between multiple regulators and several FX banks were announced on the same day, today. The banks prefer not to be singled out for misconduct but just to be one of many, so that this is viewed as more of a market problem. The banks were not found to have attempted to manipulate FX rates but instead found to have had ineffective controls allowing traders to engage in manipulative behavior. However, the DOJ is still looking into criminal charges, the New York regulator would not sign on to this agreement as it was felt to be too weak and penalties against many other banks by these same and other regulators will be forthcoming.

The Swiss regulator FINMA also fined UBS for precious metals misconduct, finding "clear attempt to manipulate precious metals benchmarks", particularly in the silver market. As FINMA also fined UBS for FX market violations, UBS would certainly have wanted both announcements at once.

Then the Bank of England hopped onto the bad news train today as well. They have been quiet for several months after announcing that an unnamed employee had been suspended for misconduct regarding FX. Today they announced that the chief FX dealer had been fired yesterday, but still provided little information, other than misconduct was discovered as part of the FX manipulation probe but the behavior itself was not related to the probe.

London Silver Daily Fixing to End August 14 After 117 Years

Reuters reports that Deutsche Bank has postponed to August 14 its decision to drop out of the London Silver Market Fixing.  In January Deutsche reported that as part of its retreat from much of the commodity business, it was going to sell its' memberships in the gold and silver fixes, run by five and three banks, respectively. They have not been able to sell either so far and announced that they will drop out of the processes on August 14.  The London Silver Market Fixing Ltd. said that the fix will cease at that date.  The possibility of another firm taking over the fix with replacement bank(s)  remains a possibility, although this might be a difficult time to attract anyone to establish benchmark prices.  The CFTC ended an investigation into the silver fix in 2013 without finding any wrongdoing.

Many lawsuits regarding the gold fix are currently in the process of being consolidated by the courts.  There do not appear to be any lawsuits regarding the silver benchmark.