Swiss competition watchdog fines major banks over rate cartels

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ZURICH, Dec (Shanghai: 600875.SS - news) 21 (Reuters) - The Swiss Competition Commission (COMCO) said on Wednesday it had fined several European and U.S. banks over four instances of interest rate cartels, the largest of which was a 33.9 million Swiss franc ($32.9 million) penalty for JPMorgan Chase & Co (Xetra: 850628 - news) .

The JPMorgan fine came after COMCO concluded it operated a bilateral cartel with Royal Bank of Scotland (LSE: RBS.L - news) (RBS) with the aim of influencing the Swiss franc LIBOR benchmark between March 2008 and July 2009, COMCO said in a statement.

RBS received full immunity for revealing the existence of the cartel to the COMCO.

Barclays (LSE: BARC.L - news) was also fined 29.8 million francs for participating in a cartel in euro interest rate derivatives, COMCO said.

For full information on the COMCO decisions see https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releases.html

($1 = 1.0282 Swiss francs) (Reporting by Joshua Franklin; Editing by Michael Shields)