Five Massive Banks Were Just Fined $3.3 Billion For Allegedly Manipulating Currency Markets

Five massive banks just got slammed with $3.3 billion in fines by regulators in three countries, after a lengthy probe over accusations that traders had tried to manipulate currency markets.

UBS, the Royal Bank of Scotland, JP Morgan, HSBC and Citibank were all fined more than of $3.2 billion by authorities in Switzerland, the UK, and the US this morning. Here's how that breaks down.

• $1.4 billion in fines from US regulators (the Commodity Futures Trading Commission).
• $138 million in fines from the Swiss regulator.
• $1.7 billion in fines from UK regulators (the Financial Conduct Authority).

For each bank, this is the combined charge from the three regulators, according to Bloomberg.

• UBS: $800 million in fines.
• Citigroup: $668 million in fines.
• JP Morgan $662 million in fines.
• RBS: $634 million in fines.
• HSBC: $618 million in fines.

It's the biggest set of charges ever levied by British financial regulators, and all the banks listed co-operated with the investigation.

Here's what Britain's FCA said that they were charged for:

Between 1 January 2008 and 15 October 2013, ineffective controls at the Banks allowed G10 spot FX traders to put their Banks' interests ahead of those of their clients, other market participants and the wider UK financial system. The Banks failed to manage obvious risks around confidentiality, conflicts of interest and trading conduct.

These failings allowed traders at those Banks to behave unacceptably. They shared information about clients' activities which they had been trusted to keep confidential and attempted to manipulate G10 spot FX currency rates, including in collusion with traders at other firms, in a way that could disadvantage those clients and the market.

According to the FCA, the fines would have been 30% higher if the banks listed hadn't co-operated with the investigations. An investigation into Barclays, one of the large banks notably not mentioned in the list, is still ongoing.

These banks and plenty of others have been reporting that they've set aside hundreds of millions of dollars to prepare for these charges, which have been a long time coming.