New Zealand’s Commerce Commission to now investigate forex market

New Zealand regulator launching active investigation into the currency trading market

We learned on Monday that New Zealand’s Commerce Commission is investigating the foreign exchange market, amid a global inquiry into alleged manipulation of currency rates. This comes on the back of an announcement by The Australian Securities and Investment Commission, when they joined the worldwide investigation earlier in March.

The New Zealand regulator’s investigation comes as at least a dozen authorities in North America, Asia and Europe conduct inquiries into claims traders colluded with their counterparts at rival banks to set foreign exchange rates by sharing client information.

The Commerce Commission has an “investigation in that space,” a spokeswoman told New Zealand’s BusinessDesk on Monday. The spokeswoman declined to comment on the scope of the investigation or any of the parties involved. We can probably assume some of New Zealand’s largest banks will be initial targets of the investigation.

The Commerce Commission is a general business and trading practices regulator in New Zealand. However, the strictly financial market regulator The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) is aware of the international inquiries, and will “continue to monitor developments here and abroad, and to liaise with agencies in New Zealand, Australia and further afield,” a FMA spokesman said in a statement.

New Zealand is doing what it feels necessary to keep up with the investigations worldwide in the forex market being spearheaded by other leading western economies. We will continue to monitor the news of this newly launched probe coming out of New Zealand, as not much details have come out yet.

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

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