“Some of Europe’s most powerful financial institutions, including Deutsche Bank and  Société Générale, were hit with a record €1.7bn in fines from Europe’s top competition enforcer on Wednesday after admitting to participating in a cartel to rig two global interest rate benchmarks.

“The multi-party settlements unveiled by the European Commission are the first results from a sweeping two-year probe into separate conspiracies to fix the Japan focused Yen Libor and its European sister benchmark Euribor, which allegedly involves a total of up to 10 financial groups.

“Six banks and a broker agreed to pay fines for taking part in at least one cartel, two were spared fines for having alerted authorities to the issue, and the rest have rejected settlements and are likely to face formal antitrust charges from Brussels.

“The agreements mark the first time that Deutsche, SocGen, Citi and JPMorgan have agreed to pay fines in connection with the wide-ranging global rate-rigging scandal.”

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