Royal Bank of Scotland Fined £28.59 Million for Giving Secrets to Barclays

By Linda Scott; published on March 31, 2010 at 12:34 pm

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A bank which is partly owned by the UK Government was fined on 30th March 2010 by a UK Government watchdog for giving away confidential pricing information to a competitor.

Royal Bank of Scotland (LON:RBS) passed on generic and specific pricing information to Barclays (LON:BARC) in 2008.

Barclays gained immunity from being fined under the Office of Fair Trading leniency policy by being the first to report the issue.

The OFT said in a statement:

The disclosures by RBS took place in the course of a number of contacts on the fringes of social, client or industry events or through telephone conversations. The information concerned the pricing of loan products to large professional services firms, such as solicitors, accountancy and real estate firms, in respect of which RBS and Barclays are the main providers.

Ali Nikpay, OFT Senior Director of Cartels and Criminal Enforcement, said:

Any company that discloses confidential future pricing information to its competitors risks a substantial penalty. It is important that companies operating in the UK understand the seriousness of such conduct and ensure effective competition compliance throughout their organisation.

This case underlines the OFT’s commitment to protecting competition in the financial services sector. It also highlights the strong benefits of acting promptly to report anti-competitive conduct to the OFT and of co-operating with such investigations.

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Posted by Linda Scott on March 31, 2010. Filed under Business,Finance,Legal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

News Tags: Bank, Barclays, LON:BARC, LON:RBS, Office of Fair Trading, OFT, RBS, Royal Bank of Scotland, UK Government.

About Linda Scott

Linda Scott is Editor in Chief, and a founder of, The Global Herald.

Website: http://theglobalherald.com