Rate Scandal: Deutsche Bank's First Big Fine Won't Be Its Last

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/deutsche-bank-ordered-to-pay-big-fine-in-rate-fixing-scandal-a-937260.html



Subprime mortgages, currency tricks, interest rate fixing: Wherever supervisory authorities have probed crooked deals of the past, Deutsche Bank comes up. Now Germany's biggest bank has had to pay its first big fine. It won't be the last.

Rate Scandal: Deutsche Bank's First Big Fine Won't Be Its Last
By Stefan Kaiser
December 04, 2013 – 06:19 PM

The statement had already been prepared: "We are attaching the highest institutional importance to ensuring that this type of misconduct does not happen again," the chief executives of Deutsche Bank, Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen, said in a statement shortly before midday on Wednesday. Minutes earlier, the European Commission in Brussels had slapped record fines totaling €1.7 billion ($2.3 billion) on six international banks. Deutsche Bank's share was the biggest by far at €725 million.

The Commission concluded that Germany's biggest bank, together with three other banks, was part of a cartel that manipulated the Euribor benchmark interest rate. It also said the bank colluded illegally in setting the equivalent London and Tokyo rates. The banks had admitted their misconduct and agreed to a settlement, said Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia.

It's the first major fine Deutsche Bank has has to pay for its past sins,and it's unlikely to be the last. The bank is embroiled in many lawsuits around the world, most of them related to the time before the 2008 financial crisis.

• Several US authorities are targeting the perpetrators of the financial crisis -- banks that bundled and sold the controversial mortgage-backed securities from home loans. JP Morgan Chase alone has to pay $13 billion. Deutsche Bank faces possible claims running into billions of dollars.