Miguel Maya, CEO of Millennium BCP, defended this Wednesday that “there was no accusation of a cartel” in the opinion expressed by the European Court of Justice this week.
The court, argues the CEO, “came to express that it could constitute a restriction on competition by object”, but that this “does not mean that it does”.
The leader of Portugal’s largest private bank, one of 14 that were fined by the Competition Authority, guarantees that “at no time” did he identify any irregularity, stressing that “it is not proven anywhere that the exchange of information between banks resulted in harm to customers”. “There was no evidence that there was any purpose or effect”.
What happened, he said, “was a set of information that was actually exchanged between marketing departments” but in a period “in which lower interest rates were even practiced”.
This Monday, the European Court of Justice, in response to the Court of Competition, Regulation and Supervision, stated that this exchange of information raises problems: “It is sufficient that this exchange constitutes a form of coordination which, by its very nature, is necessarily, in a context such as that involving the exchange, detrimental to the correct and normal functioning of competition. Now, for a market to function under normal conditions, operators must determine autonomously the policy they intend to follow and must remain uncertain as to the future behaviour of other participants”, stated the court.
“From the description of the facts in question provided by the Portuguese court, it appears that the information exchanged related in particular to the intentions of future changes to the spreads of the participants in the exchange. Furthermore, if this is the case, since spreads constitute one of the parameters in light of which competition is established in a market, such an exchange could only have had the objective of distorting competition”, it further considered.
The Competition Authority has imposed fines totalling €225 million on 14 banks, including CGD, BCP, BPI, Santander and BES, for exchanging sensitive information on loan spreads.
The ruling by the Competition, Regulation and Supervision Court is scheduled for September 20.
Source: www.jornaldenegocios.pt
