Part-nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland was today fined £28.6m sterling for breaking UK competition law after revealing details of its loan prices to rival Barclays.
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said RBS told Barclays the cost of its loans to large professional firms such as solicitors and accountants through a series of contacts between October 2007 and February or March 2008.
'Any company that discloses confidential future pricing information to its competitors risks a substantial penalty,' OFT's senior director of cartels and criminal enforcement said.
An RBS spokesman lamented the breach of competition rules. 'This is a deeply regrettable and isolated case from nearly two years ago, involving only two members of staff, one of whom has left the bank and one other who faces suspension and further investigation,' he said.
'We have co-operated fully with the OFT throughout and have introduced stringent additional competition law training to ensure that this unacceptable behaviour does not happen again,' he added.
The British government pumped billions of pounds into the troubled group, ravaged by the fierce global credit crunch and its takeover of Dutch bank giant ABN Amro at the top of the market in 2007, just before the financial crisis struck.
