The Court of Justice of the European Union has upheld the EU General Court’s annulment of the €33.6 million fine imposed on the investment bank HSBC at the end of 2016 for participating in a cartel on euro-denominated interest rate derivatives (see EUROPE 12334/14), in a judgment handed down on Thursday 12 January (Case C-883/19 P).
In its judgment, the Court annulled the part of the General Court’s judgment of September 2019 that rejected the appeal lodged by the HSBC group, but maintained the part annulling the fine imposed. In particular, it found that the General Court made two errors of law with regard to the presumption of innocence.
Nor should the General Court have found that it was for HSBC to demonstrate that the discussions on median prices were necessary for the functioning of the market for euro-denominated interest rate derivatives, or that they met the conditions of the provisions of the TFEU prohibiting cartels (Article 101(3) TFEU).
See the Court’s judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/4v5 (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)