The Swiss Competition Authority targets a cartel in the market for trading precious metals

The Swiss Competition Authority (Comco) has recently opened an antitrust investigation against several major Swiss- based and international financial houses, UBS, Julius Bär, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Barclays, Morgan Stanley and Mitsui. The Comco believed that these institutions have entered into an agreement to coordinate the so-called 'bid-ask spread' prices for precious metals that include gold, silver, platinum and palladium. Apparently, the Comco decided to enquire into whether the prices for such metals was manipulated on the basis of the information which may have been supplied by UBS that, according to the media, was granted conditional fine immunity under the Swiss leniency guidelines (Leprogramme de clémence en droit suisse de cartels). The Comco then joined other competition authorities, namely the US Department of Justice and the European Commission, that had previously started an antitrust investigation against global financial institutions to establish whether they manipulated the trading prices for precious metals.

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