Banned Transactions
BNP Paribas admitted that it processed almost $9 billion in banned transactions from 2004 to 2012 involving Sudan, Iran and Cuba. Its penalty dwarfs the combined $4.9 billion levied against 21 other banks for transactions tied to sanctioned countries since U.S. President Barack Obama took office. The Paris-based bank has to pay more because its violations were worse and it didn’t cooperate fully, U.S. authorities said.
New York’s top banking regulator required BNP Paribas to stop employing people including Dominique Remy, former head of structured finance for the corporate and investment bank, and Christopher Marks, the former group head of debt capital markets. Starting Jan. 1, the bank will be barred from U.S. dollar-clearing operations for one year at business lines where the misconduct occurred.
“The long-term issue is the earnings outlook, which is poor,” Omar Fall, an analyst at Jefferies International in London, said by phone. In particular, in the U.S. “corporate financing revenue growth may be difficult to achieve as rainmakers in the division have left,” he said.
The shares fell as much as 1.4 percent and were down 0.3 percent, at 51.17 euros by 1:17 p.m. in Paris, extending the loss this year to 9.7 percent, the third-worst performance in the 30-company Euro Stoxx Banks Index. Relief that the five-year probe is over and BNP Paribas’s assurance that it will keep the dividend at last year’s level of 1.50 euros ($2.05) drove the stock to the biggest gain since October yesterday.