In 2019, the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority (the FSA) conducted an inspection of Danske Bank’s market monitoring function and issued a number of orders on 6 December 2019. Danske Bank has since then taken a series of steps to ensure compliance with the orders. At the same time, the FSA also announced further investigations, which have now led the FSA to file a criminal complaint against Danske Bank A/S for violations of the Market Abuse Regulation on account of inadequate market monitoring and opposite trades.

Philippe Vollot, Chief Compliance Officer, comments: “We take this matter very seriously. We did not have adequate market monitoring in place, and we have therefore since 2019 made significant investments to strengthen the systems and controls in close dialogue with the FSA. The so-called opposite trades were due to insufficient procedures, and we have introduced new controls designed to prevent something similar from happening again. Each trade had a real buying or selling interest (rebalancing of portfolios), and we have not seen any indication of intentional wrongdoing or any harm to customers or market participants.”

Danske Bank cooperates fully with the authorities, but cannot comment further on the criminal complaint as long as the police are investigating the case.

A summary of the criminal complaint has been published at finanstilsynet.dk.

Danske Bank