Romanian competition body fines largest banks for collusion on interbank money market

Romania’s competition body, following an investigation initiated at the end of 2022, concluded that ten banks breached the competition regulations and the Treaty of Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) by exchanging information with the final aim of coordinating their actions and manipulating the interbank interest rate indices ROBOR used for the calculation of variable lending interest rates. The competition body set fines totalling RON 3.73 billion (EUR 710 million), according to the release published on June 7.

The total fines amount to 3.8% of the banking system’s total equity or 0.38% of the total banking assets. The ten banks concentrate the largest part, but not all of the banking system’s assets and equity.