From the New York Times' DealBook blog:
Switzerland’s Competition Commission said on Monday that it had begun investigating seven financial institutions, including the Swiss banks UBS and Julius Baer, over potential collusion to manipulate the precious-metals market.
In a statement, the commission said it was examining whether there was collusion among banks around the bid-ask spread in the trading of gold, silver, platinum and palladium.
The financial institutions are Barclays, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Julius Baer, Morgan Stanley and UBS, and the trading house Mitsui & Company Precious Metals, a unit of Mitsui & Company of Japan.
Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Mitsui and UBS declined to comment, while HSBC did not immediately have a comment when reached on Monday. Julius Baer said that it was “fully cooperating” with the inquiry....MORE
