Market regulators in Asia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States began to investigate the $4.7 trillion per day foreign exchange market (forex) after Bloomberg News reported in June 2013 that currency dealers said they had been front-running client orders and rigging the foreign exchange benchmark WM/Reuters rates by colluding with counterparts and pushing through trades before and during the 60-second windows when the benchmark rates are set.
Two of these senior traders, Richard Usher and Rohan Ramchandani, were members of the 13-member Bank of England Joint Standing Committee's chief dealers group.
[15] As of December 2014, the monetary losses caused by manipulation of the forex market were estimated to represent $11.5 billion per year for Britain’s 20.7 million pension holders alone (£7.5B/year).
The FCA determined that between 1 January 2008 and 15 October 2013 the five banks failed to manage risks around client confidentiality, conflict of interest, and trading conduct.
[20] On the same day the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in coordination with the FCA imposed collective fines of $1.4 billion against the same five banks for attempted manipulation of, and for aiding and abetting other banks’ attempts to manipulate, global foreign exchange benchmark rates to benefit the positions of certain traders.
Currency traders at the banks used private chatrooms to communicate and plan their attempts to manipulate the foreign exchange benchmark rates.
[27] On 20 May 2015, the five banks pleaded guilty to felony charges by the United States Department of Justice and agreed to pay fines totaling more than $5.7 billion.
[31] As of November 2014, respective authorities announced remediation programmes aimed at repairing trust in their banking systems and the wider foreign exchange market place.
[32] In Switzerland, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority announced in December 2014, that for a period of two years UBS would be limited to a maximum annual variable compensation to 200% of the basic salary for foreign exchange and precious metals employees globally.