The European Commission just refunded Societe Generale’s €218.6m of its Euribor rigging fine
We're used to banks paying out multi-million pound fines for their various misdeeds when it comes to Libor/Euribor/FX rigging – but now one French bank has had a reprieve.
Societe Generale said this morning that the European Commission had decided to refund €218.17m (£175.81m) of its €445.88m Euribor-rigging fine.
Former employees of the bank, as well as Barclays and Deutsche, have appeared before a court in London, accused of rigging the Euro Interbank Offered Rate, aka Euribor.
Yesterday the European Commission quietly put out a statement saying it had modified the fine after SocGen "erred" when it submitted the initial data to the EU.
"The new figures are determined based on the same methodology used to impose a fine to the recipients of the original decision adopted in December 2013," said the EC. In other words: SocGen's initial fine has essentially been cut in half, to €228m.
The good news for SocGen, which like other European banks has been hit in recent months by market volatility (it has announced plans to cut 550 jobs over the next five years), is that the revision is likely to boost its first quarter results.
Last month, in an effort to boost its UK private banking business, SocGen bought the wealth management businesses of Kleinwort Benson from the Oddo Group, another French financial services company.
Shares in the bank were up two per cent, at €30.66, in mid-morning trading.