Swiss banks probed for rate-fixing amid international probe

Feb 3, 2012, 10:25 GMT

Bern - Switzerland's biggest banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, are being investigated for anti-trust violations as part of an international probe into possible interbank interest rate fixing by European and Japanese lenders, the competition watchdog said Friday in Bern.

Traders at the banks are suspected of having manipulated international reference rates, thus gaining an unfair advantage when trading financial derivative products linked to these rates, the anti-trust authority WEKO said.

Last year, the European Commission and Japanese authorities opened investigations into several banks.

WEKO was also probing whether activities of the following banks had affected the Swiss market: US banks Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase, Britain's HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland, Dutch lender Rabobank, France's Societe Generale, Germany's Deutsche Bank, as well as Japan's Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Mizuho and Sumitomo Mitsui.

International interbank rates are calculated daily, based on submissions from various banks.

By allegedly manipulating these submissions, the traders knew in advance how the rates would move, WEKO spokesman Olivier Schaller said.

'If you already know that, you have an advantage over others who think that the trend moves in a different direction,' he told dpa.