Talk may be cheap, but in currency traders' chatrooms, at least, improper messages can be very expensive for their companies.
In instant message groups with names such as "Semi Grumpy Old Men" and "Three Way Banana Split," up to nine foreign-exchange spot traders logged in for long conversations about their work. Those chats have now cost their employers - including Citigroup Inc., Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. - some US$1.2 billion ($1.8b) in European Union cartel fines.
There may be more to come. Regulators said on Thursday they're still looking at a third chatroom cartel that could involve fines for Credit Suisse Group AG and others. Credit Suisse said it doesn't believe its employees engaged in any conduct that violated antitrust rules and that it will "vigorously contest" the allegations.
"As soon as you start talking about market-sensitive stuff with your competitors you are in risky territory," said Angus MacCulloch, a senior law lecturer at Lancaster University, England. "There is no information that is safe, arguably, to talk to your competitors about if it will affect the market. If you give information to your competitors about your future intention in the market, that is a problem."
Just being part of the two chatrooms showed a tacit agreement to collude, according to the European Commission. The traders, all men and based in London, New York and Tokyo, swapped information about the US dollar plus ten other currencies involving 55 combinations in total. This is wider than a similar US probe which didn't investigate the so-called "Essex Express" or "Semi Grumpy Old Men" group of train commuters to London that traded US dollar and yen, among other currency pairs.