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“The only thing that’s not possible is self-regulation or the status quo”, Barnier said.
The parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee is preparing to vote on October 8 to boost the bloc’s sanctions against market abuse, including jail sentences for bank staff found guilty of collusion to fix interbank lending rates.
The cartel probes will end as soon as possible, Almunia said, and will result in hefty fines if antitrust violations are proven. “We can imagine in this case we are not talking about €10 -- it is a big amount.” “I’m referring to banks, but also in some cases to brokers”, he said. Fines may be increased to take into account the “gravity” of the behavior in the cases, he added.
Dan Doctoroff, chief executive officer of Bloomberg LP, also spoke at the EU parliament event. Doctoroff proposed a new benchmark using data from a variety of financial transactions, including credit default swaps, which would “better reflect participating banks’ real cost of credit”.