127 COMPETITION LAW Scope of the Investigation The Commission’s investigation concerned trading of the G10 currencies,8 which comprise the most liquid and traded currencies worldwide. When companies exchange large amounts of different currencies, they usually do so through a forex trader. The main customers of forex traders include asset managers, pension funds, hedge funds, major companies and other banks. Throughout the investigation process, it was revealed that some traders in charge of the forex spot trading of G10 currencies, acting on behalf of the fined banks, exchanged sensitive information and trading plans, and occasionally coordinated their trading strategies through an online professional chatroom called Sterling Lads. In other words, employees of different banks conveyed future-facing strategic information with each other in online chat rooms. Information exchanges between competitors are typically assessed as concerted practices under Article 101(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (“TFEU”). Concerted practices are a looser form of coordination not requiring the establishment of a binding agreement. That being said, information exchanges of individualized future prices and/or quantities are normally treated as hardcore cartels pursuant to Article 101(1)(a) of the TFEU, which expressly prohibits restrictions on competition that “directly or indirectly fix purchase or selling prices or any other trading conditions”. The more strategic the data (i.e., the more it reduces uncertainty in the market), the more likely it is the Commission will find it restricts competition. According to the Commission, the information exchanges in this particular case enabled the traders to make informed market decisions on whether and when to sell or buy the currencies they had in their portfolios, as opposed to a situation where traders acting independently from each other take an inherent risk in taking these decisions. In addition, occasionally these information exchanges also allowed the 8 Australian dollar (AUD), Canadian dollar (CAD), Euro (EUR), Japanese yen (JPY), New Zealand dollar (NZD), Norwegian krone (NOK), Pound sterling (GBP), Swedish krona (SEK), Swiss franc (CHF), United States dollar (USD).
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