* Acting against the interests of clients and counterparties: Foreign exchange traders acted unacceptably frequently against the interests of their clients and counterparties. This conduct was partly coordinated with other banks. Several foreign exchange traders:
o
actively triggered client stop-loss orders to the advantage of the bank
o engaged in front-running
o engaged in risk-free speculation at the clients' expense when making partial fills, where at least part of clients' profitable foreign exchange transactions were credited to the bank
o disclosed confidential client identifying information to third parties
o in individual cases engaged in deception regarding sales mark-ups and excessive mark-ups associated with an internal product of the bank.
In the improper business conduct in foreign exchange and precious metals trading, electronic communication platforms played a key role. The abusive practices were evidenced in the information exchanged between traders in chat groups. FINMA examined thousands of suspicious chat group conversations between traders at multiple banks (see detailed report
http://www.finma.ch/d/aktuell/Documents/ubs-fx-bericht-20141112-d.pdf ).