UBS to settle allegations over precious metals trading
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Submitted by cpowell on Sunday, November 9, 2014.
Daniel Schfer and James Shotter
Financial Times, London
Sunday, November 9, 2014
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/428e1400-6804-11e4-bcd5-00144feabdc0.html
UBS is to settle allegations of misconduct at its precious metals
trading business alongside a planned agreement between UK and US
authorities and seven banks over accusations of foreign exchange market
rigging.
The Swiss lender is one of a group of banks including Barclays,
Citigroup, HSBC, JPMorgan, and Royal Bank of Scotland that are set to
announce an agreement of at least L1.5 billion
on Wednesday to settle forex rigging allegations with the UK's Financial Conduct Authority.
Several US authorities are also expected to be part of the settlement,
including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the
Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the US, while Switzerland's
Finma may also take part. Bank of America Merrill Lynch is also expected
to settle but only with US authorities.
UBS is expected to strike a settlement over alleged trader
misbehaviour at its precious metals desks with at least one authority as
part of a group deal over forex with multiple regulators this week, two
people close to the situation said. They cautioned that the timing of a
precious metals deal could still slip to a date after the forex
agreement.
Regulators around the world have alleged that traders at a number of
banks colluded and shared information about client orders to manipulate
prices in the $5.3 trillion-a-day forex market.
UBS has previously disclosed that it launched an internal probe of
its precious metals business in addition to its forex investigation. It
declined to comment for this article.
Unlike at other banks, UBS's precious metals and forex businesses are
closely integrated. The business units have joint management and the
bank's precious metals staff -- who mainly trade gold and silver -- sit
on the same floor as the forex traders.
One person familiar with UBS's internal probe said that the bank
found a small number of potentially problematic incidents at its
precious metals desk.
Andre Flotron, the head of UBS's gold desk in Zurich, has been on leave since January for reasons unspecified by the lender.
Mr Flotron has not been accused of wrongdoing and has never responded
to any requests for comment. He has labelled his professional status on
his LinkedIn profile as being "on leave, keen to return in due time."
The precious metals market has this year become the latest trading
area to be subjected to heavy regulatory scrutiny and allegations of
price rigging. The FCA fined Barclays L26 million in May after an
options trader was found to have manipulated the London gold fix.
BaFin, Germany's financial regulator, has launched a formal
investigation into the gold market and is probing Deutsche Bank, one of
the former members of a tarnished gold-fix panel that will soon be
replaced by an electronic fixing.
UBS's top management has pushed hard to speed up its internal forex
and precious metals probes. It has sought to get ahead of rivals in
securing immunity agreements as it wants to leave behind its legacy
problems as soon as possible.
In a global forex-rigging probe against at least 15 banks, UBS has
the highest numbers of suspended traders -- at least seven -- across
London, New York, Singapore, and Zurich.
It is said to have fired several forex traders in recent months, some of whom had earlier been suspended.
UBS is also in separate talks over a forex settlement with the US
Department of Justice's criminal division. It is expected to get
leniency from the DoJ's antitrust team in return for handing over
information early on and co-operating.
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Fraser Murrell: Permanent gold backwardation means a worldwide financial meltdown
Submitted by cpowell on Sunday, November 9, 2014.
November 9, 2014
Australian scholar Fraser Murrell, a mathmetician and former
stockbroker, argues today in commentary posted at MineWeb that, as the
economist Antal Fekete has written, permanent backwardation in gold is
the great threat to the world financial system, at least as it is now
constituted as a fiat money system.
"Sooner or later," Murrell writes, "the bullion banks and governments
will run out of ammunition and they will be forced to step back and
allow the market to do its thing. Which is to repeat the 1970s -- the
worst of all economic outcomes -- stagflation. Unfortunately, this is
the consequence of all the money printing, and while it can be delayed
it cannot be stopped. The gold price will eventually peak in the tens of
thousands of dollars and unless the bullion banks unwind their short
positions, they will either default or go bankrupt."
Murrell's commentary is headlined "Permanent Gold Backwardation = Global Meltdown Ahead" and it's posted at MineWeb here:
http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/content/en/mineweb-gold-news?oid=25916
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GATA dollar, euro, pound, or bitcoin?
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Submitted by cpowell on Sunday, November 9, 2014. Sunday, November 9, 2014
With the monetary metals mining industry agreeing to die quietly and
its investors dying with them, the World Gold Council celebrating
watches for plutocrats as its industry dies --
https://twitter.com/GOLDCOUNCIL/status/528214829841264640/photo/1
-- and the Western financial journalism celebrating central bankers
instead of questioning them critically, it's getting harder to perceive
GATA's constituency in particular beyond humanity generally.
At least our efforts in North America, dominated by the U.S. government
and Wall Street (yes, what's the difference?), produce less and less.
Efforts more distant from those financial powers seem more promising,
since while in North America the consequence of the gold price
suppression scheme is mainly the loss of the market economy, in the rest
of the world the consequence is daily financial exploitation.
GATA is not unknown outside North America. As noted yesterday --
http://www.gata.org/node/14686
-- your secretary/treasurer will be speaking twice next month at
conferences in Europe. And he has been invited to speak at three
conferences in Asia in March. But travel over such long distances is
expensive and the conference business, especially for conferences
connected with mining, is not in a position to cover much of that
expense.
Further, of course, GATA has never put a lot of effort into
fundraising -- not that it would accomplish much, given the
radioactivity of our mission: free markets, limited and transparent
government, and fair dealing among nations and peoples.
Our support has fallen off dramatically over the last year and unless
things change just as dramatically soon our operations will be severely
curtailed next year; just keeping the flag flying, the Internet site
operating, may become a challenge.
So, as a practical matter, who is our constituency? Only you 9,562
people who as of this morning belong to our e-mail dispatch list -- and
most of you have never contributed to the organization, even as a mere
dollar, euro, pound, or tiny fraction of a bitcoin from each of you
would give GATA a crucial boost right now.
Providing that little bit of support is easily accomplished by credit card or bitcoin code at GATA's Internet site --
http://www.gata.org/node/16
-- but please, just new donors this time. We can't keep relying on our most loyal friends.
One more reason to help: If this doesn't work, we may have to resort to Soupy Sales methods:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-OGy3Kh7yM
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
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