Bank of America slapped with $250 million fine after FX trading 'impropriety'

Bank of America will pay $250 million in civil fines related to "improprieties" in its foreign-exchange trading business.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency found that BofA, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup manipulated forex trades. Chase and Citi received $350 million fines each. The banks, including BofA, do not admit or deny any wrongdoing.

The fines follow multiagency examinations and investigations into the banks' activities in the global FX market, which has an average daily volume of more than $5 trillion.

"We expect national banks and federal savings associations to have controls in place that are sufficiently robust to ensure that employees will follow the law and adhere to the highest standards of conduct," said Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry. "The enforcement actions we are issuing today make clear that the OCC will take forceful action, not only when the institutions we supervise engage in wrongdoing, but when management fails to exercise the oversight necessary to ensure that employees follow laws and regulations intended to protect customers and maintain the integrity of markets."

He adds: "These enforcement actions were taken because several large banks permitted an environment to develop in which unscrupulous traders discussed manipulating foreign exchange markets. Our action today, and those of our fellow regulatory agencies here in the United States, in the United Kingdom and in Europe, sends a very strong signal that such misconduct will not be tolerated."

The OCC's findings included the following:

•Between 2008 and 2013, some of the banks' traders held discussions in online chat rooms about coordinating FX trading strategies to manipulate exchange rates to benefit traders or the bank.

Adam O'Daniel covers banking, entrepreneurs and technology for the Charlotte Business Journal.