Deutsche Bank hit with EU bond cartel complaint

Bloomberg

Deutsche Bank AG and Rabobank received formal complaints from the European Union’s antitrust watchdog for their alleged roles in a cartel for euro-denominated bonds, setting them up for potential fines from the regulator.
The European Commission said it sent the banks a so-called statement of objections laying out concerns that the banks colluded “to distort competition” in trading certain bonds issued by governments or agencies backed by them.
The EU has spent more than a decade probing how bank traders swapped information in chatrooms, leading to billions of euros in fines. The investigations followed its approval for billions of euros in government support to keep many European lenders alive during the financial crisis in the wake of the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.