Anticompetitive Agreements Between Banks Concerning the Issuance of Securities on the Primary Market and Their Trading on the Secondary Market: Features Concerning Systemic Risk Following Concerted Practices of the Traders: Few Comments Related to Financial Issues on Joined Cases T-441/21, T-449/21, T-453/21, T: 455/21, T-456/21 and T-462/21, Judgment, UBS A. O. V/Commission, ECLI:EU: T:2025:337 (UBS Case) - European Business Law Review View Anticompetitive Agreements Between Banks Concerning the Issuance of Securities on the Primary Market and Their Trading on the Secondary Market: Features Concerning Systemic Risk Following Concerted Practices of the Traders: Few Comments Related to Financial Issues on Joined Cases T-441/21, T-449/21, T-453/21, T: 455/21, T-456/21 and T-462/21, Judgment, UBS A. O. V/Commission, ECLI:EU: T:2025:337 (UBS Case) by - European Business Law Review Anticompetitive Agreements Between Banks Concerning the Issuance of Securities on the Primary Market and Their Trading on the Secondary Market: Features Concerning Systemic Risk Following Concerted Practices of the Traders: Few Comments Related to Financial Issues on Joined Cases T-441/21, T-449/21, T-453/21, T: 455/21, T-456/21 and T-462/21, Judgment, UBS A. O. V/Commission, ECLI:EU: T:2025:337 (UBS Case) 37 4

In a highly complex case concerning competition law, the Commission imposed several fines on various banking groups (inter alia UBS, UniCredit, Nomura). The core of the dispute concerns the practices of traders at these banking groups, who colluded by exchanging information (mid-prices, yield curves and spreads of bonds traded or being offered on the secondary market, volumes envisaged for purchase at auctions, information on bids, the level of overbidding and overbidding strategies at auctions) to effectively determine the issuance price of sovereign bonds and then resell these bonds on the secondary market. The case is unusual because the ruling by the General Court (GC) of the EU deals with the information channels in question without ever explicitly addressing financial stability or contagion risk. The ruling only refers to financial stability as a concept, without any stated reason. Following the GC’s rules of procedure, European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) was invited to provide several elements in response before the judges, although it did not intervene directly in the dispute. Only the ESMA statement explicitly addresses the role of financial stability and supervision of the financial system in the case. Finally, the case concerns behaviour by banks and traders between 2007 and 2011 – a period of major financial instability, including an unprecedented liquidity crisis, a solvency crisis and a major sovereign debt crisis affecting several eurozone Member States (MSs).

European Business Law Review