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Competition Tribunal partially upholds several grounds of exception raised by respondent banks to the Competition Commission’s (Commission) ‘Forex Exchange’
cartel referral.

In its order, released today, the Competition Tribunal has rejected the respondent banks call for the referral against them to be dismissed, ordering rather that the Commission redraft its referral in 40 days, requiring that it confine its case against the respondent banks to one of a single over-arching conspiracy, providing more detail on such a conspiracy, and limiting the relief sought against those respondent banks without a presence in South Africa to a declaratory order.

It additionally ordered that certain paragraphs of the previous referral, those related to the conduct of a J.P Morgan entity, should not be included in the amended referral. The Tribunal deferred the question as to whether the Commission could join certain additional banks until it had filed the above-mentioned amended referral and dismissed one of the respondent banks’ (Investec Limited) application for an order declaring the conduct of the Commission in prosecuting the referral to be vexatious and unreasonable.

Full Statement Attached

Issued by The Competition Tribunal