UBS Receives Huge Fine in Hong Kong

UBS has to pay a huge fine in Hong Kong because it overcharged its clients. Only one other major bank had to pay a similar amount ever.

UBS had warned in the last quarterly report that authorities in Hong Kong and Singapore investigated the bank. The cause of the probe were its fees charged between 2008 and 2015 for bond transactions from Asian clients.

UBS has now received the bill from Hong Kong: the Swiss bank has to pay HK$400 million – roughly 51 million Swiss francs. The financial market regulator in Hong Kong concluded that the Swiss bank had overcharged some 5,000 clients over the course of almost a decade.

The control mechanism of the bank had failed in a serious systemic fashion, the regulator said. UBS is ready to pay clients damages to the tune of about HK$25 million in addition to the fine.

The fine is the highest paid by a bank in Hong Kong ever. In 2017, HSBC had to pay HK$400 million for the distribution of Lehman Brothers securities.It is also the second fine for the Swiss bank in Hong Kong this year. In spring, the regulator had fined it 47 million francs and banned it from IPOs for a year.