Argentina’s “House Bank,” Deutsche Bank, Issued Massive Fines by U.S., U.K. Regulators

Argentina’s “House Bank,” Deutsche Bank, Issued Massive Fines by U.S., U.K. Regulators

Post date : 04.24.2015 1:28 pm

U.S. and U.K. banking regulators announced late Wednesday that Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender, is being fined a whopping $2.5 billion and is being forced to fire seven of its employees as a result of “widespread manipulation of the benchmark London Interbank Offered Bank (LIBOR) and other rates by the world’s largest banks.”

But that’s not all: Bloomberg reported that the U.K.’s FCA cited Deutsche Bank’s “false, inaccurate and misleading statements” as reason for U.K. regulators almost doubling the fine.  From the article:

“Deutsche Bank AG managed to almost double the record fine the U.K. regulator handed down for rigging Libor through its foot-dragging and evasions, the Financial Conduct Authority said.

“‘Deutsche Bank’s unacceptably slow and ineffective response’ to questions and repeated ‘false, inaccurate or misleading’ statements were cited as reasons for the FCA to tack on an additional 101 million pounds ($152 million) to bring the settlement to 227 million pounds, the FCA said Thursday.”

Unfortunately, none of this behavior surprised us, because it parallels Deutsche Bank’s recent decision to help Argentina evade U.S. judgment holders.  Just yesterday, it was reported that the bank had a significant hand in facilitating Argentina’s auction of new bonds – a debt issuance designed to perpetuate Argentina’s refusal to negotiate a resolution with creditors, an instruction repeated numerous times by a U.S. court.  It also means that Argentina intends to remain in contempt of court (the contempt citation was issued almost seven months ago) for an extended period of time. Deutsche Bank doesn’t do this as charity work and presumably generated a profit by sitting as the middle man for a scofflaw’s offering.

The manner in which Deutsche Bank helped Argentina was highly unusual and secretive, raising questions about whether it skirted the rules of the road in the same week that it was hit with record-shattering fines. Apparently no one at Deutsche Bank cares that its name is rapidly becoming synonymous with feckless corner-cutting in an industry that is already sensitive to perceptions of lawlessness.