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The top financial regulator in New York state has fined Credit Suisse $135m for a string of abuses in foreign-exchange trading, six months after slapping a $350m penalty on BNP Paribas for similar offences. According to an announcement on Monday afternoon from the Department of Financial Services, traders at the Swiss bank consistently engaged in “improper, unsafe and unsound” conduct in FX markets for at least an eight-year period running up to 2015. Traders were active members of multi-party electronic chat rooms, the DFS found, where they shared information in order to reap higher profits at customers’ expense. In addition, for a three-year period to June 2013, the bank tried to “front-run” customers’ limit and stop-loss orders by applying an algorithm apparently designed to trade ahead of orders to increase profits. Roughly 31,000 limit orders and 41,000 stop-loss orders could have been affected over that period, according to the DFS. “It is the name of the game if we front-run orders,” bragged one trader in the electronic FX business in an email in May 2012. “Sometimes you win sometimes you lose. It’s up to us to define the front run rules.” In another May 2012 email, one trader discussed with a rival at another global bank how they might tweak the price in the euro/yen currency pair, prompting that rival to remark that the activity “smlls unethical haha.” Another chatroom participant, noting the explicit nature of the discussion, wrote sarcastically: “what the hell are u two planning … this chat is a compliance dream.” Other banks have faced billions of dollars of fines for allowing traders to try to influence prices in FX markets, which are among the largest and most liquid in the world. In May 2015, for example, six global banks paid the US Department of Justice a total of $5.6bn to settle allegations of rigging. Monday’s action is the first FX-related sanction from the DFS since May, when it fined BNP Paribas $350m after finding a long pattern of “nearly unfettered misconduct” in its FX business. At the time, a person familiar with the regulator’s supervisory programme said that other fines were likely. The department’s focus on non-US banks is largely a reflection of the banks it licenses. All of the biggest US banks bar Goldman Sachs are chartered by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Credit Suisse created a “corrupt culture that failed to implement effective controls in its foreign exchange trading business,” said Mario Vullo, superintendent of the DFS, in a statement. “DFS will not tolerate any violations of law that threaten the integrity of our markets and undermine customer confidence.” The bank has agreed to take remedial actions to prevent recurrences, and will also engage a consultant for one year to review the measures and report back to the DFS. Credit Suisse had not reserved for the settlement and expects to take a $135m charge in its fourth quarter results, to be announced in February.
