With euro denominated bonds rates, one would question if there was much of a market in the first place that wasn't already stacked…
EU charges eight banks over alleged government bond cartel
11–20 of 59 posts
Re: EU charges eight banks over alleged government bond cartel
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A European Commission statement Thursday didn’t identify the institutions being investigated for "a collusive scheme that aimed at distorting competition" in trading sovereign bonds issued by euro-region governments from 2007 to 2012. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-01/tech-s-eu...
There's no good reason why those names should be hidden from the EU population. None. It's a disgrace that governments continue to cater to large corporations and allow them to get away with small fines and "admitting no wrong" (despite receiving the fines for the crime done).
As long as they are not found guilty naming them would equal to putting up the pillory. Always a bad idea.
Re: EU charges eight banks over alleged government bond cartel
#13To play devils advocate. Around that time you had periods where banks didn't know if their competitors were going to be around next month, there were also periods where they didn't know if several major European nations were going to be defaulting on their debts. In that kind of situation do the normal rules apply? I don't doubt during the banking crisis several 'dodgy' deals were done between the central banks, poli…
>In that kind of situation do the normal rules apply?
Yes.
Re: EU charges eight banks over alleged government bond cartel
#14Again as usual people were stealing lots of money (not just the banks), and they aren't even named, and they won't go to prison.
These ,,charges'' are part of the cost of doing ,,business''
Re: EU charges eight banks over alleged government bond cartel
#15To play devils advocate. Around that time you had periods where banks didn't know if their competitors were going to be around next month, there were also periods where they didn't know if several major European nations were going to be defaulting on their debts. In that kind of situation do the normal rules apply? I don't doubt during the banking crisis several 'dodgy' deals were done between the central banks, poli…
>In that kind of situation do the normal rules apply? Yes.
Well, the rules also stated that the ECB couldn't buy government bonds and now that's the norm.
Central banks, and some banks, have a political side in it which deals badly with rules. And off course, banks and political institutions are always filled with corruption so just looking at rules text doesn't say much about what is really condemned or not.
Re: EU charges eight banks over alleged government bond cartel
#16To play devils advocate. Around that time you had periods where banks didn't know if their competitors were going to be around next month, there were also periods where they didn't know if several major European nations were going to be defaulting on their debts. In that kind of situation do the normal rules apply? I don't doubt during the banking crisis several 'dodgy' deals were done between the central banks, poli…
>In that kind of situation do the normal rules apply? Yes.
So if at the worst extent of the financial crisis it was becoming clear a bank was going to collapse. If the central bank fast tracked through a deal to get that bank sold over a weekend, you would be against that?
Re: EU charges eight banks over alleged government bond cartel
#17Which 8 banks?
I work in finance (although on the buy side), my gut feeling is that it's the usual suspects: big investment banks. The people manning the prop desks in these institutions get to know each other eventually as the landscape is fairly small and they all work for/with each other eventually. This means that cliques along the lines of "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine" form naturally. It's almost impossible t…
Checkbox-ticking folks will be glad to sell you a quasi-legal tax avoidance scheme: powered by PwC, EY, D(&T), KPMG. Recommended by MBB.
Re: EU charges eight banks over alleged government bond cartel
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no good reason why those names should be hidden from the EU population. None. It's a disgrace that governments continue to cater to large corporations and allow them to get away with small fines and "admitting no wrong" (despite receiving the fines for the crime done).
Here’s one, possible, good reason: the EU has a sort of “whistleblower” defense, where the first company to cooperate in a cartel investigation gets off free. Assuming that bad PR is a significant part of punishment in these cases, it would make sense to delay announcing the culprits here to give one of them time to escape being named.
They still get named in the end but they avoid some of the fine.
Re: EU charges eight banks over alleged government bond cartel
#19As an ex trader, I'm not surprised. Customers on the buy side have been suspicious for years, but any one of us would not have the pieces to figure it out. Roughly in the mid 2000s it got very common for people in the trading business to get on chatrooms. Bloomberg is probably the best known, but somehow Yahoo Chat also has a piece in the commodity space. The chats go on constantly, and I would guess people just didn…
When I worked in commodities trading about 8-9 years ago, everyone used Yahoo Chat. However, it also popped up a message (as I recall) informing the user their conversations were being recorded for regulatory reasons.
Yahoo and AIM. IB used to allow you to login to either just to keep you trapped in BBG.
Re: EU charges eight banks over alleged government bond cartel
#20Put the fucking cunts in jail!