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A summary of some UK bank fines - are banks unfit for purpose?

The British have been extraordinarily slow to regulate the banks after the 2008 meltdown.  The FSA has only fined and banned executives from three companies, one director at HBOS, the directors of Welcome Financial Services, three directors at Northern Rock and scarcely fined the banks at all. These three companies where the directors were fined  were clearly singled out because they are no longer trading.   The SFO has arrested 3 further men who do not work for major banks and released them without charge.     It seems that so long as a British bank continues trading its senior staff are immune from prosecution.

The US authorities have done much better, handing out large fines that may give the banks pause for thought. The British fines are derisory, if a bank fiddles billions it gets fined a few million, they are no deterrent.  The US fines are a deterrent.

HSBC is one of the largest banks in the world.  It copes with bank regulation by treating it as an expense of trading and just carries on misbehaving.

Some of HSBC's fines:

HSBC fined a record $US1.9 billion for money laundering

As part of subprime selling the US securities and exchange commission reached a settlement at a cost to HSBC of $484m (£338m)

HSBC fined £10.5m for selling five-year bonds to over 80s

Mexico fines HSBC $27.5m for lax money-laundering control

HSBC fined over £3 million following customer data loss

RBS


RBS has allocated £850m for misselling payment protection insurance

RBS is paying a total of £390m for LIBOR fixing. Broken down as: RBS is paying 87.5 million pounds ($137 million) to the FSA, $150 million to the U.S. Department of Justice and $325 million to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates trade in derivatives.

The bank’s US arm, Citizens, has also agreed to make a $137million settlement for driving customers into running up excessive overdraft fees

FSA fines RBS and NatWest £2.8m for poor complaint handling

FSA fines Royal Bank of Scotland Group £5.6m for UK sanctions controls failings

FSA fines Royal Bank of Scotland Plc 750,000 for money laundering control failings

FSA imposes £2.17 million fine for failure by Direct Line and Churchill to conduct their businesses with due skill, care and diligence

Fined £100,000 for poor investment practices

£2.8m for poor management of retail banking

£8.75m for failure to control money laundering

plus many more small fines, RBS is truly terrible.  See the FSA website for RBS misdemeanours.  Notice that the FSA fines are derisory compared with the scale of RBS.

Standard Chartered

£967m for money laundering in the USA

Barclays

£290m threatened fine for energy market manipulation in the USA

£230m in USA and £59.5m in UK for LIBOR fixing

£2.45m for reporting failures relating to insider trading

£1.12m for including up to £750 client cash as their own (this cash can be leveraged about 1250%).

£7.7m for mis-selling investment funds


Lloyd's

$350m for sanctions busting

to follow...
Santander

to follow

Northern Rock

£270m for incorrectly stating interest

Trading Platform, Derivatives and Credit Default Swap cheating

FSA fines HSBC £100,000 for transaction reporting breaches

"In July 2005 the FSA requested certain trading information from HSBC Stockbroker Services (HSS) which, when reviewed, revealed that HSS had reported the client transaction as a "sale" prior to a positive announcement and a "purchase" after it.

Following discussions between the FSA and HSBC it emerged that transaction reports being made through HSS had been inaccurately representing client purchases as client sales and vice versa.

The FSA relies on firms to provide accurate transaction reports to enable it to monitor the market effectively and failing to do so could affect the FSA's ability to maintain confidence in the financial markets and reduce financial crime."

The FSA fine is derisory and might be taken as approval for rigging trading platforms.

RBS was fined $1.9m for wrongly pricing bonds.

To be continued........


It really seems as if these banks have been taken over by criminals who are getting away scot-free.  You try stealing millions from pensioners, you won't get away with it.  Any other business acting in this way would be shut down and its directors thrown in jail, what is going on?  There can be little doubt now that criminal behaviour in banks has had an appalling effect on everybody's income and prospects but the British government is doing very little to punish those responsible.


See

 Barclays, LIBOR FSA etc..

A Summary of some UK bank fines

See also

Bank of England Bank Stability Report 

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