Four global banks have agreed to pay fines totalling over £100 million after an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found traders had shared sensitive information about UK government bonds.

Citi, HSBC, Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Canada will pay penalties for specific instances where traders exchanged competitively sensitive information about the pricing of gilts and gilt asset swaps in private one-to-one Bloomberg chatrooms between 2009 and 2013.

Deutsche Bank received immunity from financial penalties for reporting its participation in the chats under the CMA's leniency policy. Citi also applied for leniency during the investigation and received a reduced fine.

The fines for each bank are: Citi £17,160,000, HSBC £23,400,000, Morgan Stanley £29,700,000, and Royal Bank of Canada £34,200,000.

Juliette Enser, executive director of competition enforcement at the CMA, said: "Following constructive engagement between the banks and the CMA, we are pleased that we have been able to settle these 5 cases involving the past sharing of competitively sensitive information about pricing."

She added: "The fines imposed today reflect the CMA's commitment to dealing with competition law breaches and deterring anti-competitive conduct. The fines would have been substantially higher had the banks not already taken unusually extensive steps to make sure that this doesn't happen again."

The unlawful exchanges involved information about the sale of gilts by the UK Debt Management Office via auctions, subsequent trading of gilts and gilt asset swaps, and selling of gilts to the Bank of England through "buy back" auctions.

Gilts are an important type of UK government bond that help finance public spending, with investors lending money to the UK government in return for steady interest payments.

Since the incidents, the banks have implemented extensive compliance measures to prevent similar behaviour in future. The firms have until 22 April 2025 to pay their fines.

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