The European Commission has fined banks Credit Agricole, HSBC and JPMorgan Chase a total of 485 million euros ($520 million) for their part in a cartel to fix the price of financial benchmarks linked to the euro.
They were part of a seven-bank cartel that colluded between September 2005 and May 2008 to distort the Euribor benchmark interest rate used to reflect the cost of interbank lending. JP Morgan was fined 337 million euros, Credit Agricole 115 million euros and HSBC is being asked to pay 34 million euros.
The trio of banks had held out against a September 2013 settlement when the European Commission imposed almost 1 billion euros of fines on Deutsche Bank, Société Générale and Royal Bank of Scotland.
