Banks fined €2.6bn over market rigging

Regulators in the US, Britain and Switzerland ordered five banks to pay about €2.6bn in fines in the first wave of penalties since authorities began a global probe into the rigging of key foreign-exchange benchmarks last year.

Switzerland’s UBS was ordered to pay the most at €640m — £234m (€297m) by Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), $290m (€232m) by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and 134 million Swiss francs (€111m) by the Swiss regulator Finma.

Citigroup will pay $668m, followed by JPMorgan Chase at $662m. Royal Bank of Scotland was fined about £399m, and HSBC £389m. Barclays, which had been in settlement talks, said it wasn’t ready for a deal.