FCA v. The Royal Bank of Scotland plc (FX benchmark manipulation, 2014)

Settled

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 3, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, with sampled and disputed records read a second time. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

Report an error in this record (fca-the-royal-bank-of-scotland-plc-fx-fixing-2014) by email

In November 2014 the FCA fined The Royal Bank of Scotland plc £217,000,000 for failing over five years to control its London G10 spot FX voice trading, which allowed traders to attempt to manipulate the WMR and ECB fix rates and to share confidential client information.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

£217m

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars. This regulator states penalties in GBP. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

The Financial Conduct Authority issued this final notice on 11 November 2014 as part of a coordinated FX settlement with five banks. RBS settled early and took a 30 per cent discount from a penalty of £310,000,000.

The notice finds that RBS did not adequately identify and manage the conflicts of interest in its London G10 spot FX business. That allowed traders, alone or with traders at other firms, to attempt to manipulate the WMR and ECB fix rates for the firm's benefit, to try to trigger clients' stop-loss orders, and to share confidential client information. The charge is a breach of the FCA's Principle 3 on management and control, not a charge against named traders.

This library tags the matter as FX fixing. It is not benchmark submission rigging: the notice mentions LIBOR and EURIBOR only as earlier enforcement against other firms, and the FX fixes are set from transactions, not panel submissions. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's.

The record previously also carried the benchmark-submission tag.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• FX fixing — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2014-11-11 FCA final notice

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• FCA final notice

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.