UBS has been fined HK$400m (U$51m) in Hong Kong for overcharging thousands of customers for bond trades over almost a decade in a case regulators said exposed “systemic” control failures at the Swiss bank.
The Securities and Futures Commission said on Monday that between 2008 and 2015 Hong Kong clients of UBS’s wealth management division were forced to pay more for bonds and structured debt products after the bank added a further “spread” to the trades that clients in its flagship wealth management business had requested.
The Swiss bank also took two years to report the misconduct after discovering it, the SFC said of a practice that involved almost 30,000 transactions and about 5,000 clients accounts managed in Hong Kong. UBS has also agreed to repay about HK$200m to the affected clients.