Nomura Targeted in EU Antitrust Complaint Over Bond Trading

(Bloomberg) -- Nomura Holdings Inc. said it received a European Union antitrust complaint over its involvement in a suspected bond trading cartel in the EU, one of a slew of probes that have already seen banks fined billions of euros.

Nomura and its international unit received a so-called statement of objections reflecting the European Commission’s “initial views around certain historical conduct," the bank said in a regulatory filing on Friday, without giving details of the probe. The bank declined to comment further on the investigation.

Eight lenders were charged in January over suspected collusion in the trading of euro government bonds from 2007 to 2012, a timespan covering the European sovereign debt crisis that saw bond yields soar. The EU didn’t identify the companies concerned. Only UniCredit SpA acknowledged its involvement in the probe. Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc is also one of the banks, a person said in February.

While the EU’s powerful antitrust arm often lags far behind financial authorities in the U.S. and the U.K. in punishing collusion between traders, its fines can be hefty. Citigroup Inc., Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are among five banks that agreed in May to pay European Union fines totaling 1.07 billion euros ($1.2 billion) for colluding on foreign-exchange trading strategies.

Several authorities are investigating Nomura and others over "government, supranational, sub-sovereign and agency debt securities trading," Nomura said in the filing. It is also fighting related U.S. and Canadian class actions lawsuits.

The EU also stepped up a cartel probe into the trading of U.S. dollar supra-sovereign, sovereign and agency bonds in December. Deutsche Bank AG, Credit Suisse Group AG and Credit Agricole SA said they were among the four banks in the probe. Bank of America Corp. was identified as the fourth bank, two people said at the time. Nomura didn’t receive objections in that case, it said in December.

The European Commission didn’t respond to a request for comment.

--With assistance from Donal Griffin.

To contact the reporter on this story: Aoife White in Brussels at awhite62@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Peter Chapman, Christopher Elser

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