WSJ: Citigroup, Barclays Nearing $800 Mln Settlement On Private Forex Lawsuit

(RTTNews) - US financial giant Citigroup, Inc. (C) and British lender Barclays Plc (BCS, BARC.L) are nearing a settlement totaling $800 million with private investors to resolve charges of foreign exchange rate rigging, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Tuesday. However, its is not revealed as to how much Citigroup or Barclays would pay individually.

The private forex lawsuit was filed by private investors in the U.S. and the Caribbean, including pension funds and other investment firms, in late 2013.

The lawsuit accuses traders at a dozen banks of improperly sharing confidential information about their clients' orders via electronic chat rooms, then using that information to make money at the expense of their clients.

These were related to spot FX trading activities as well as controls applicable to those activities. The traders are charged of colluding and sharing information about client orders to manipulate foreign-exchange rates.

Barclays and Citigroup have suspended several traders in connection to the investigation into currencies markets, which was kicked off in London in April 2013 by the U.K. conduct authority.

To settle similar private lawsuits, J.P. Morgan in late January agreed to pay $99.5 million, and UBS last week agreed to pay $135 million. However, the lawsuits are still outstanding against others leading banks.

The world-wide foreign-exchange rigging probe has already cost global banks billions of dollars in payouts and fines.

Investigations on the foreign exchange rate manipulations were conducted by various regulatory and civil enforcement authorities in a dozen countries on three continents over the past two years.

The regulators included US banking regulators, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission or CFTC, and the Office of the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency or OCC, as well as the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority or FCA, Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority or Finma, and other foreign government authorities.

Citigroup in December reached $1.018 billion settlements with the FCA, OCC and the CFTC to settle investigations into its foreign exchange business. However, Barclays had pulled out of negotiations with these regulators.

C closed Tuesday's regular trading session at $53.84, up $0.15 or 0.28% on a volume of 13.90 million shares, while BCS closed at $14.95, down $0.15 or 0.99% on a volume of 2.73 million shares.