Five of the world’s largest banks—Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, RBS, HSBC, and UBS—were fined $3.4 billion in total by authorities in the U.K., U.S., and Switzerland for manipulating global currency markets. (Barclays is still under investigation.) Traders at the banks allegedly conspired in chat rooms for years to manipulate currency markets at the expense of clients. Each day, some $5.3 trillion changes hands in global foreign-exchange markets, with 40 percent of trades taking place in London.
