Following an appeal, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) – Europe’s top court - has annulled an antitrust fine of around €34 million handed to HSBC in 2016 for rigging the Euribor financial benchmark along with a cartel of six other banks.

HSBC’s fine was originally imposed by the European Commission, but a lower tribunal subsequently scrapped the penalty over the watchdog’s “insufficient reasoning”. The case was then handed to the CJEU.

“The Court of Justice upholds the annulment of the 33.6 million euro fine imposed on the HSBC Group,” the CJEU said.

Total fines for all banks involved in the cartel – HSBC, Crédit Agricole, JPMorgan Chase, RBS, Barclays, Deutsche Bank and Société Générale – totalled €485 million.

The 2016 case was a continuation of an investigation into the same cartel from 2013. HSBC, Crédit Agricole and JPMorgan Chase chose not to settle the case with the commission, while the other banks did so in 2013.

The European commission originally conducted an investigation which found there was a cartel in place between September 2005 and May 2008, involving the seven banks over varying time periods.

The participating traders of the banks were in regular contact through corporate chat-rooms or instant messaging services with the aim to distort the normal course of pricing components for euro interest rate derivatives.

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