英语听力精选进阶版 14025

French banks fined for fee cartel

Summary

20 September 2010

Eleven of the biggest banks in France have been fined a total of 384 million euros by the competition authority for fixing amongst themselves a price they charge for handling cheques.

Reporter:

Jonty Bloom

Report

In 2002, banks in France introduced a new commission charge of 4.3 cents for every cheque they handled because of the speeding up of the cheque-processing system. 

The banks argued that the faster system, rather than being more efficient and saving them money, actually meant that they had to release funds to customers more quickly, and therefore could not make as much money in interest payments themselves while waiting for the cheques to clear.

But the competition authority has now decided¹ that the commission charges were unjustified and that the banks illegally acted together to fix the rate that they all charged. The banks have a month to appeal.

Jonty Bloom, BBC News, London

1 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。