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EU court upholds cartel fine on HSBC

An EU court has upheld a fine of €31.7 million imposed on the banking group HSBC for breaching EU competition law.

The European Commission had found in 2016 that HSBC, Crédit Agricole, and JPMorgan Chase had restricted competition in the market for euro interest-rate derivatives.

It found that they had participated in a cartel, colluding on prices and exchanging sensitive information.

New decision

In 2019, however, the EU’s General Court, despite upholding the infringement finding, annulled an initial fine of €33.6 million, finding that the commission’s statement of reasons had been inadequate.

HSBC appealed this decision to the higher Court of Justice, which rejected its appeal last year, while upholding the annulment of the original fine.  

This process had delayed the case decided on today (27 November), which was HSBC’s appeal against a new commission decision adopted in 2021 to address the General Court’s 2019 finding.

The General Court today (27 November) dismissed HSBC’s appeal – including the bank’s argument that the commission had imposed the fine outside of the period prescribed for doing so.