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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 decided 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