EU antitrust regulators are set to impose multi-million euro fines on Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase and three others for suspected rigging of the euribor interest rate benchmark, it was reported.
Credit Agricole, Societe Generale and HSBC will also be hit with fines, a source said.
Barclays, which alerted the European Commission to the suspected wrongdoing, will escape being fined.
The move comes two years after the Commission, the EU’s antitrust authority, raided a number of global banks for suspected fixing of euribor, the benchmark used as the basis for pricing £210trillion worth of financial contracts, from Spanish mortgages to complex derivatives.
The source said some of the banks had agreed to settle with the Commission in exchange for a 10% reduction in their fines.
The announcement is expected to be made next month.
The EU can impose fines of up to 10% of a company’s global revenue for breaches of antitrust rules.
In this case, the fines are likely to be towards the low end of the scale, the source said.
However, since all the banks have revenues of at least £13.4billion a year, even a 1% fine would result in hundreds of millions in penalties.
HSBC posted revenues of £39.6billion last year, while RBS earned £25.8billion, Societe Generale £19.4billion, Deutsche Bank £28.1billion and Credit Agricole £13.7billion. JP Morgan earned £60.5billion. Several of the banks will not be fined immediately as they are contesting the size of the proposed penalties.
In those cases, the banks are likely to face formal charges next month, followed by fines next year, the source said.
RBS, Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale and HSBC declined to comment. Credit Agricole and JP Morgan were not immediately available to comment.
Authorities in the US, Britain and elsewhere have so far fined five financial firms, including RBS and Barclays, £2.3billion for manipulating libor and its euribor cousin. Seven individuals have been criminally charged.
Globally, the cost to banks of cleaning up past misdeeds is expected to soar to around £77.9billion if JPMorgan agrees a £8billion deal with the US Justice Department over its mortgage business.