Germany, France to mastermind European data network – bypassing US

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s President Francois Hollande (R) (Reuters / Francois Lenoir)

Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande will review plans to build up a trustworthy data protection network in Europe. The challenge is to avoid data passing through the US after revelations of mass NSA spying in Germany and France.

Merkel has been one of the biggest supporters of greater data protection in Europe since the revelations that the US tapped her phone emerged in a Der Spiegel news report in October, based on information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Earlier, France learned from reports in Le Monde that the NSA has also been recording dozens of millions of French phone calls, including those of the French authorities. According to the report, in just one month between December 10, 2012 and January 8, 2013, the NSA recorded a total of 70.3 million French phone calls.

Meanwhile, according to the Snowden revelations, the German Chancellor’s mobile phone has been on an NSA target list since 2002 and was codenamed “GE Chancellor Merkel.” The monitoring operation was allegedly still in force even a few weeks before US President Barack Obama’s visit to Berlin in June 2013.

Washington has denied it monitored Merkel’s personal phone, insisting that its surveillance practices are focused on threats to national security, namely terrorism. Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, where phone tapping was common practice, compared the NSA’s spying to that of the Stasi secret police in the former German Democratic Republic, and accused the US of a grave breach of trust. According to polls, the Germans have lost confidence in the US as a trustworthy partner, and a majority of Germans consider Edward Snowden a hero. It’s believed that his revelations have hit Berlin particularly hard since Germany is not a member of the so-called “Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance which includes NSA-equivalent agencies in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, exchanging intelligence with each other on a regular basis.

In the wake of the revelations about US global spying activities, the German government has made it mandatory for ministers to use encryption on their phones to secure their communications against intrusion. Berlin has also prohibited the use of iPhones for official business, as they are not compatible with encryption.

France and Germany have been seeking bilateral talks with the United States to discuss the issue of the snooping, with Merkel’s government pressing for a “no spying” agreement with Washington. Negotiations on an anti-spying agreement began in August 2013, but the US has been reluctant to sign such a deal, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported in mid-January, citing a Federal Intelligence Service (BND) employee as saying: “We’re getting nothing.”

Merkel, who is due to visit France on Wednesday, said in her weekly podcast that she disapproved of companies such as Google and Facebook, basing their operations in countries with low levels of data protection, while in reality being active in countries with high data protection.

“Above all, we’ll talk about European providers that offer security for our citizens, so that one shouldn’t have to send emails and other information across the Atlantic. Rather, one could build up a communication network inside Europe,” she said.

Hollande’s office said France agrees with Berlin’s proposals, Reuters reported, citing an official as saying: “Now that the German government is formed, it is important that we take up the initiative together.”

Source: RT

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Germany, France to mastermind European data network – bypassing US

Merkel, Hollande to discuss European communication network avoiding U.S.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday she would talk to French President Francois Hollande about building up a European communication network to avoid emails and other data passing through the United States.

Reuters: Top News

Merkel, Hollande to discuss European communication network avoiding U.S.

Denmark Is About To Establish Even More Ambitious Climate Goals Than The European Union

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Denmark Is About To Establish Even More Ambitious Climate Goals Than The European Union

EU justice chief attacks European "hypocrisy" on spying

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Some EU countries that have criticized U.S. cyber surveillance are “hypocritical” as they themselves are failing to protect citizens’ private information, the European Union’s top justice official said on Tuesday.

Reuters: Top News

EU justice chief attacks European "hypocrisy" on spying

EU justice chief attacks European "hypocrisy" on spying

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Some EU countries that have criticized U.S. cyber surveillance are “hypocritical” as they themselves are failing to protect citizens’ private information, the European Union’s top justice official said on Tuesday.

Reuters: Top News

EU justice chief attacks European "hypocrisy" on spying

Russia muscles into European nuclear industry

BERLIN, Germany — A leading Hungarian official has said an agreement last week to give Russia a foothold in his country’s nuclear future is Budapest’s best deal in 40 years.

Hungary granted Russia’s state energy company Rosatom a $ 14-billion contract to double the capacity of the country’s sole nuclear power plant, a 2000-megawatt reactor in the Danube River city of Paks.

The funds would be offered as a 30-year loan package to be extended at below-market rates.

“These new reactors will surely enhance Hungary’s energy independence and security,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters.

But one person’s bargain is another’s Faustian deal — in this case at least. Critics say the sweetheart deal may as well have been written by Mephistopheles, the demon of German folklore.

They say the project was never tendered for competitive bids despite an earlier expression of interest from the French energy company Areva. Skeptics worry it represents an effort by Putin to add nuclear energy to the oil and gas monopoly he’s used so effectively to cement Russia’s influence in Central and Eastern Europe.

“What are Hungarians to make of the fact that Prime Minister Viktor Orban has committed them to invest [billions] building two new nuclear reactors without consulting his own cabinet let alone parliament, industry experts, or the Hungarian people?” asked a pointed editorial in the English-language Budapest Beacon.

Orban maintains that the deal meets European Union regulations. But the opposition has demanded an extraordinary session of parliament be convened to discuss its terms and implications.

The prime minister has already been forced to retract an earlier statement he made claiming that the European Commission had approved the deal, amending it to say that the regulatory body has made no objections to the pact.

“It is too early to say [whether the agreement meets EU regulations],” a spokeswoman for the commission told GlobalPost in an email. “We are looking at the issue now and will let you know when the legal analysis has been completed.”

The EU’s 2004 “Public Sector Directive” mandates that public works projects in the energy sector must be open to competitive bids, and Hungary’s own laws on government procurement require open tenders unless there are reasons why the project can only be carried out by a specific contractor.

However, Orban has suggested that as the expansion of an existing facility, rather than a new project, the Paks contract isn’t subject to the regulation. Moreover, Rosatom was said to be the only company to offer financing in discussions with companies ahead of the decision not to open a bid, Hungarian media reported.

The European Commission’s decision about the agreement’s compliance could have far-reaching implications.

In 2012, allegations of corruption surrounded the Russian bid to expand the Czech Republic’s Temelin nuclear reactor due to the involvement of a Czech firm under investigation for insider trading and breach of trust in connection with previous deals. Now it looks doubtful that project will go forward at all, according to Czech media.

Similarly, a Russian project to build a 2000-MW nuclear plant in Belene, Bulgaria, was excoriated as “a corrupt and completely illegitimate business project, aimed at producing abundant and expensive electricity in a country with excess capacity in a region of declining electricity demand,” in the words of Ognyan Minchev, a research fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States’ Balkan Trust for Democracy. The Bulgarian parliament voted to scrap plans for the reactor in February last year following a protracted debate over its environmental impact and a new investigation into the projected costs.

Specific allegations of corruption have yet to be leveled at the Rosatom deal, and a spokesman for anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International’s office in Hungary said his organization lacks sufficient information to make a judgment. However, corruption is a generalized concern in both countries: Hungary already ranks a mediocre 47 out of 176 countries on the watchdog’s Corruption Perception Index and Russia an abysmal 130.

Russia already enjoys a near-monopoly over Central European gas supplies, providing three-quarters of the gas used by Hungary and the Czech Republic and two-thirds of Ukraine’s.

Putin has made no bones about using that dominance for commercial leverage or as a weapon of foreign policy. In 2006 and 2009, for instance, Russia cut off gas supplies to the Ukraine in the middle of winter during disputes over prices, leaving customers across Europe to freeze until their countries coughed up more cash.

In March last year, critics argued that Russia purposefully drove up energy prices in Bulgaria to engineer the fall of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov’s government after he terminated the controversial Russian-run nuclear power plant in Belene.

And any possibility that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych may cave to the ongoing protests in his country for greater integration with Europe has been all but eliminated by Russia’s energy monopoly, says Jonathan Stern, an oil and gas expert at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

“What Putin said, as far as I can see, was not ‘we’ll turn off the gas,’ but ‘if you want to align yourself to the EU, then you will be paying the price that the EU pays,’”he said.

“The reason Russia is able to do this is that these countries have not made sufficient efforts to diversify their imports.”

If history is any guide, Russia will make sure that nuclear power doesn’t change that.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/140123/russia-nuclear-deal-hungary-power-influence

GlobalPost – Home

Russia muscles into European nuclear industry

European teens shunning ‘dead and buried’ Facebook

(Photo : Tech Times) Facebook

The results of a study funded by the European Union, that checked on the pulse of young social network users, indicate Facebook is in trouble, big trouble. Anthropologists revealed that as older users in Europe flock to use Facebook, the younger generation is looking elsewhere and moving on to other platforms.

The Global Social Media Impact Study looks into how users between the age of 16 and 18 years old are finding Facebook with the influx of parents and other older users. Respondents from eight member countries of the EU revealed that they are turning to other platforms such as Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

“What we’ve learned from working with 16-18 year olds in the UK is that Facebook is not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried. Mostly they feel embarrassed even to be associated with it. Where once parents worried about their children joining Facebook, the children now say it is their family that insists they stay there to post about their lives,” wrote lead anthropologist Daniel Miller for the academic blog The Conversation.

“You just can’t be young and free if you know your parents can access your every indiscretion. The desire for the new, also drives each new generation to find their own media and this is playing out now in social media. It is nothing new that young people care about style and status in relation to their peers, and Facebook is simply not cool anymore,” Miller added.

Experts also took note that the youngsters in exodus from Facebook know that its platform is far more superior than that of the alternatives but the study reveals that these users look beyond functionality when making decisions.

While the older population is very much concerned about privacies on social media networks such as Facebook, teenagers really do not leave the network because of such issues nor use it as basis for choosing the platforms they will use.

“The questionnaires we applied this summer in our Italian fieldsite showed that around 40% of respondents who were on Facebook had never changed their privacy settings, which means their profiles were public. At the same time, more than 80% responded they were not concerned or did not care if an individual or an organization would use their personal data available on the platform,” a blog post of University College London, which participated in the study, read.

The study does not really indicate the death of Facebook for now but merely looks into how a certain population of its users diversify their use of social media.

This is not the first time concerns arose that Facebook may not be attractive to the younger generation of users. In November, Facebook CFO David Ebersman said the site “did see a decrease in daily users, specifically among younger teens,” prompting the company’s COO Sheryl Sandberg to issue a clarification subsequently that “The vast majority of U.S. teens are on Facebook. And the majority of U.S. teens use Facebook almost every day.”

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/2314/20131228/european-teens-shuns-dead-and-buried-facebook.htm

2012 The Awakening

European teens shunning ‘dead and buried’ Facebook

European teens shunning ‘dead and buried’ Facebook

(Photo : Tech Times) Facebook

The results of a study funded by the European Union, that checked on the pulse of young social network users, indicate Facebook is in trouble, big trouble. Anthropologists revealed that as older users in Europe flock to use Facebook, the younger generation is looking elsewhere and moving on to other platforms.

The Global Social Media Impact Study looks into how users between the age of 16 and 18 years old are finding Facebook with the influx of parents and other older users. Respondents from eight member countries of the EU revealed that they are turning to other platforms such as Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

“What we’ve learned from working with 16-18 year olds in the UK is that Facebook is not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried. Mostly they feel embarrassed even to be associated with it. Where once parents worried about their children joining Facebook, the children now say it is their family that insists they stay there to post about their lives,” wrote lead anthropologist Daniel Miller for the academic blog The Conversation.

“You just can’t be young and free if you know your parents can access your every indiscretion. The desire for the new, also drives each new generation to find their own media and this is playing out now in social media. It is nothing new that young people care about style and status in relation to their peers, and Facebook is simply not cool anymore,” Miller added.

Experts also took note that the youngsters in exodus from Facebook know that its platform is far more superior than that of the alternatives but the study reveals that these users look beyond functionality when making decisions.

While the older population is very much concerned about privacies on social media networks such as Facebook, teenagers really do not leave the network because of such issues nor use it as basis for choosing the platforms they will use.

“The questionnaires we applied this summer in our Italian fieldsite showed that around 40% of respondents who were on Facebook had never changed their privacy settings, which means their profiles were public. At the same time, more than 80% responded they were not concerned or did not care if an individual or an organization would use their personal data available on the platform,” a blog post of University College London, which participated in the study, read.

The study does not really indicate the death of Facebook for now but merely looks into how a certain population of its users diversify their use of social media.

This is not the first time concerns arose that Facebook may not be attractive to the younger generation of users. In November, Facebook CFO David Ebersman said the site “did see a decrease in daily users, specifically among younger teens,” prompting the company’s COO Sheryl Sandberg to issue a clarification subsequently that “The vast majority of U.S. teens are on Facebook. And the majority of U.S. teens use Facebook almost every day.”

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/2314/20131228/european-teens-shuns-dead-and-buried-facebook.htm

2012 The Awakening

European teens shunning ‘dead and buried’ Facebook

GCHQ and European spy agencies worked together on mass surveillance

Source: London Guardian

The German, French, Spanish and Swedish intelligence services have all developed methods of mass surveillance of internet and phone traffic over the past five years in close partnership with Britain’s GCHQ eavesdropping agency.

The bulk monitoring is carried out through direct taps into fibre optic cables and the development of covert relationships with telecommunications companies. A loose but growing eavesdropping alliance has allowed intelligence agencies from one country to cultivate ties with corporations from another to facilitate the trawling of the web, according to GCHQ documents leaked by the former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

The files also make clear that GCHQ played a leading role in advising its European counterparts how to work around national laws intended to restrict the surveillance power of intelligence agencies.

The German, French and Spanish governments have reacted angrily to reports based on National Security Agency (NSA) files leaked by Snowden since June, revealing the interception of communications by tens of millions of their citizens each month. US intelligence officials have insisted the mass monitoring was carried out by the security agencies in the countries involved and shared with the US.

Full article here



BlackListedNews.com

GCHQ and European spy agencies worked together on mass surveillance

Energy stocks fuel European shares after results beats

Energy stocks fuel European shares after results beats
http://currenteconomictrendsandnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/e37c5__p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif

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Tue Oct 29, 2013 11:31am EDT





* FTSEurofirst 300 up 0.1 pct




* BP, Saipem fuel energy rally after results




* Deutsche Bank, UBS hit, raise buffers for legal costs




By Toni Vorobyova




LONDON, Oct 29 (Reuters) – European shares edged higher on Tuesday as estimate-beating results at BP and Saipem fuelled a surge in the oil sector, a laggard in this year’s equity rally.




Adding to the upbeat crop of results, Finnish handset maker Nokia forecast a more profitable future for its NSN network equipment and software unit, sending its shares up 6.6 percent.




With the third quarter results season about a third of the way through, European companies have so far beaten earnings expectations by an average of 1.7 percent, behind their U.S. peers but on track to end two consecutive quarters of misses, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine data.




“Overall, it’s a fairly mixed bag but with a bit of positive upside on earnings so far,” said Neil Marsh, managing director of cash equities at Newedge.




“I still think we will have positive momentum going into the end of the year. Fundamentals look reasonably good, the economic data is not appalling like it has been, it’s showing signs of at least bottoming out so it’s fairly bullish at the minute.”




The FTSEurofirst 300 was up 0.1 percent at 1,284.27 points at 1506 GMT, less than 10 points away from last week’s five year peaks.




The energy sector was responsible for most of those gains, with heavyweight BP up 4.7 percent after it unveiled forecast-beating results and promised to sell more assets and return the proceeds to shareholders.




“The underlying numbers look close to expectations but the good news is an increase in the dividend, an extension of the buy-back programme and a commitment to keep capex flat in 2014,” analysts at Liberum Capital said in a note.




The rebound in BP follows a tough year, when the shares gained roughly half as much as the broad European market while the oil and gas sector as a whole has been the second worst performer after basic resources, on concerns about falling crude prices and rising costs.




Negative market positioning and sentiment have set the bar relatively low for positive surprises.




Among the least-loved stocks has been Italian oil services group Saipem, which confounded market bets for a third profit warning on Tuesday by confirming its earnings outlook for the year.




Shares in Saipem jumped 5.2 percent on the news, which wrong footed an active short-selling market in the stock. Short sellers borrow shares they do not own and sell them on, in the hope of buying back the stock more cheaply later on.




As of Oct. 28, some 15.6 percent of Saipem’s shares available to be borrowed were out on loan to short sellers, Markit data showed, a multi-year high if periods around dividend payments, when arbitragers borrow the stock for tax purposes, are excluded.




Volumes in Saipem topped five times of their 90-day daily average, making it the most actively traded stock on FTSEurofirst 300, followed by UBS at four times the average.




Shares in the Swiss bank dropped 7.8 percent on news it has been ordered to hold extra capital in case it has to pay out more in legal settlements.




“They (regulators) are looking for a pound of flesh … and I think that’s the way it’s going to be from now on,” said Nick Xanders, head of strategy at BTIG. “The sector has started to roll over and I think it will continue.”





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Reuters: Financial Services and Real Estate

Read more about Energy stocks fuel European shares after results beats and other interesting subjects concerning Real Estate at TheDailyNewsReport.com

European Union To Curb Transfer Of Internet Data To United States

The Guardian reports that under new laws, American internet companies improperly sharing Europeans’ personal data (with the U.S. government or otherwise) will face billions of dollars in fines:

New European rules aimed at curbing questionable transfers of data from EU countries to the US are being finalised in Brussels in the first concrete reaction to the Edward Snowden disclosures on US and British mass surveillance of digital communications.

The draft would make it harder for the big US internet servers and social media providers to transfer European data to third countries, subject them to EU law rather than secret American court orders, and authorise swingeing fines possibly running into the billions for the first time for not complying with the new rules.

Data privacy in the EU is currently under the authority of national governments with standards varying enormously across the 28 countries, complicating efforts to arrive at satisfactory data transfer agreements with the US. The current rules are easily sidestepped by the big Silicon Valley companies, Brussels argues.

The post European Union To Curb Transfer Of Internet Data To United States appeared first on disinformation.

disinformation

European Union To Curb Transfer Of Internet Data To United States

Can Israel Become a Member of the European Union?

It is a welcome sign of changing times in the Middle East that a mission of 65 industry associations and representatives from 17 member states of the European Union is visiting Israel for two days in late October on a “mission for growth.” The mission is led by Antonio Tajani, the Italian politician who was a cofounder of the Forza Italia party in 1994 and was the former spokesman for the government of Silvio Berlusconi, and who is now European Commission vice-president responsible for Industry and Entrepreneurship. The aim of the mission is to strengthen business relations between the EU and Israel and to explore opportunities for cooperation between European and Israeli SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises).

The mission is to discuss various sectors of the economy: among them are space technologies, information and communication technology, water and environmental technologies, raw material, and homeland security. Commissioner Tajani in May 2012 called for Europe to become more innovative in order to compete with other countries and engage in “robust and sustainable growth.” In September 2013 he was even more downright: “We (Europeans) face a systematic industrial massacre.” The conclusion was that European industry must be made more robust, sustainable, and more growth-oriented.

The premise of the mission to Israel is that the dynamic economy of Israel can help the growth and competitiveness of industry in the EU countries. The expectation is that this can be done by promoting innovation and sustainable growth, by helping EU companies operate in Israel, and by promoting partnership between Israeli and European companies in those sectors identified as leading industries in Israel. The EU appears to have acknowledged the significant strides made by Israel in research and development.

All this is flattering to Israel and is a welcome change from the less than cordial political posture of the EU towards Israel in recent years. Conflicts have arisen over the EU Venice Declaration of 1980 which was the EU’s first official statement on the Arab-Israeli conflict, over the participation of the EU in the 1991 Madrid peace conference, over the Israeli Operation Grapes of Wrath when Israel in April 1996 was defending itself against terrorism by Hezbollah in South Lebanon, and especially over the Israeli settlements in the disputed territories.

The most recent contentious decisions of the EU came in 2013 when the EU issued a directive that the Israeli government declare in any future arrangements with the EU that settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are outside the State of Israel. EU grants, funding, prizes, or scholarships will not be given to Israelis unless this is made clear. Since 1998 the EU has held that the territories are not part of Israel and therefore products produced in them must not benefit from preferential treatment.

The October 2013 mission must be put in the context of trade and cultural relations between the two sides already in existence. The EEC, the forerunner to the EU, established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1959, and reached a free trade agreement in 1975. On November 20, 1995 an Association Agreement was signed, and entered into force on June 1, 2000. Included in it are free trade arrangements for industrial goods and concessions for agricultural products, and liberalization of trade in services. Regular meetings are supposed to take place to discuss political and economic issues. Trade between the two sides has grown: in 2012 EU exports to Israel reached 17 billion euros, while EU imports from Israel were 12.6 billion euros.

Israel has relations with the EU directly and indirectly in various ways. The most important indirect forms are the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that Israel joined in 2010. Equally significant is the participation of Israel in the European Research and Development (ERD) program. Since 1993, specifically after the Oslo Accords, Israel has been accepted as a full partner in the program. The relationship was reinforced in 1995 when the EU accepted Israel’s request for researchers to be included in management committees with the same standing as EU member countries.

In the 6th program of the ERD Framework, 2002-2006, a considerable number of Israeli projects were involved: 429 academic projects, 209 industrial, and 145 others. In the present 7th program, 2007-2013, Israelis are again participating in considerable numbers, benefiting from working with large European organizations. Israel is also part of the MEDA program, launched in 1996 and amended in 2000, which is an instrument of economic and financial cooperation under the Euro-Mediterranean partnership which seeks to reinforce political stability, create a Euro-Mediterranean free trade area and develop economic and social cooperation.

Interestingly, Article 2 of the 1975 Association Agreement states “Relations between the Parties, as well as all the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles, which guides their internal and international policy and constitutes an essential part of this Agreement.” This allows one to raise the question of whether there can be closer ties between Israel and the EU. Israel already takes part in a number of European events and activities. The argument was made by Silvio Berlusconi in his visit to Israel in February 2010 that his “greatest desire” was that Israel should join the EU.

Even though it is in the Middle East and not on the European mainland, Israel can be regarded as sharing the values of Western civilization, democracy, freedom, rule of law, and an open economic system based on market principles. A convincing argument can be made that Israel could become a member of or associated with NATO and OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). Since NATO extends to Turkey, it may embrace Israel on the way. An equally compelling argument can be made that it could be accepted into the EU. Among other things, Israel can provide a model for European countries for successful integration of immigrants into their societies. With political vision, the way is open from Israeli partnership and association with the EU in a variety of activities to full membership.

Michael Curtis is author of Jews, Antisemitism, and the Middle East.

American Thinker

Can Israel Become a Member of the European Union?

US And European Regulators Probing FX Market Rigging

10 weeks ago we warned that the persistent "banging the close" action in FX markets warranted an investigation into market rigging and manipulation. It seems the US, Swiss, UK, and EU regulators have finally woken up:

• *U.S. SAID TO OPEN CRIMINAL PROBE OF CURRENCY MARKET RIGGING


• *SWISS, UK REGULATORS REVIEWING ALLEGED CURRENCY MARKET RIGGING


• *EU ANTITRUST REGULATORS SAID THEY ARE PROBING CURRENCY MARKET

Of course, gold and silver remain highly efficient and "clean" markets…

 

As we noted 2 months ago…

"Banging the close," is hardly a new "event" but the ubiquity with which it is occurring around 4pm GMT (when major FX market benchmarks known as "WM/Reuters rates" are set) is prompting authorities to investigate potential abuse of these benchmarks by the major banks. From Libor to ISDAFix and from base-and-precious metals to energy markets, adding the largest markets in the world – foreign exchange – to the banks" pernicious manipulations does not seem like a stretch. Critically, benchmark providers base daily valuations of indexes spanning different currencies on the 4 p.m. WM/Reuters rates (which in turn drives derivative settlements and triggers).

Stunningly, the same pattern – a sudden surge minutes before 4pm in London on the last trading day of the month, followed by a quick reversal – occurred 31% of the time across 14 FX pairs over 2 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. For the most frequently traded pairs, such as EURUSD, it happened about half the time! U.S. regulators have sanctioned firms for banging the close in other markets; we await the results of the current probe…

 

Via Bloomberg,

The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation of possible manipulation of the $ 5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, a person familiar with the matter said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is also looking into alleged rigging of interest rates associated with the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, is in the early stages of its currency market probe, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the inquiry is confidential.

…

The U.S. investigation comes as the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority said in June it was reviewing potential manipulation of exchange rates. That month, allegations that dealers at banks pooled information through instant messages and used client orders to move benchmark currency rates were reported by Bloomberg News. Regulators are probing the alleged abuse of financial benchmarks used in markets from oil to interest rate swaps by the firms that play a central role in setting them.

…

European Union antitrust regulators are examining the possible manipulation of currency rates, following a Swiss probe into whether banks colluded to manipulate the $ 5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market. Joaquin Almunia, the EU’s competition commissioner, said he learned in the last few days of activities that “could mean violation of competition rules around the possible manipulation of types of exchange rates,” according to a live chat on the EU’s website Oct. 7. ?

— Aoife White and Gaspard Sebag?

 

Zero Hedge

US And European Regulators Probing FX Market Rigging