Credit Suisse gives itself clean bill of health in FX rate fix investigation

Credit Suisse says everything normal with FX trades, will investigations agree?

Following their own internally conducted review, Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS)  states on Wednesday that it has not found anything “materially untoward” in how it trades foreign currencies, the bank’s finance chief David Mathers said on Wednesday following the publication of its first-quarter results.

The bank is having a rough few months. Reported for the quarter ended March 31, profit fell 34% to 859 million Swiss francs ($975.47 million) from the 1.3 billion francs reported in the same period a year earlier. Net revenue fell 8% to 6.47 billion francs. The profit performance fell far short of the 1.13 billion francs forecast by analysts, sending the bank’s shares down more than 2% midmorning.

As we are all aware of in the foreign exchange world, global regulators have stepped up scrutiny of alleged collusion and manipulation by traders at major banks of the largely unregulated $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market.

Mathers’ comments come more than two weeks after Credit Suisse said it was “astonished” to be drawn into the forex probe by the Swiss competition authority, after not being subject to a preliminary investigation last year.

The FX probes at the bank and the disappointing first quarter comes at a troubled time for the bank as Credit Suisse may face a new investigation of its role in helping wealthy Americans to avoid paying taxes, after New York state’s top financial regulator requested documents from the Swiss bank. We will continue following the latest developments in the FX probe as it concerns all banks involved.

For more on the global Forex industry see the LeapRate-Dow Jones Forex Industry Report.

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