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Japan: Watchdog says Deutsche, Bank of America violated antitrust laws

By  |  March 29, 2018

Japanese regulators on Thursday, March 29, said Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank had violated antitrust laws in the alleged fixing of bond prices, reported Reuters.

Japan’s Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) said it had found that London-based traders for the banks in 2012 had exchanged information and agreed on prices on US-dollar bonds issued by the European Investment Bank.

Tsuyoshi Okumura, a senior investigator for the JFTC’s International Antitrust Investigation Bureau, said this violated Japan’s anti-monopoly laws because a Japanese bank, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ, was the purchaser of the bonds.

It’s the first time the JFTC came up with such a finding against foreign banks for offences committed outside Japan, Okumura said.

Full Content: Reuters

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