South Korea’s antitrust regulator, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC), announces record fines against 15 primary bond dealers for collusion in government bond auctions over more than three years. The FTC says the companies coordinated their bidding by exchanging information on auction-day yields and volumes, and in most cases reached agreements on specific bid terms.
The regulator imposes a fine totaling 1.62 trillion won (about $1.2 billion), described as the largest in a single FTC case. The FTC links the alleged bid-rigging conduct to 150 government bond auctions conducted from January 2020 to June 2023, with cooperation involving exchanges by phone and messaging apps. It also notes the scale relative to a previous FTC record fine.
Outlets largely agree on the penalty size, the number of firms, and the broad nature of the alleged coordination. Differences are mostly in what additional context they highlight—such as describing the process as a yearlong investigation—and in the presentation of the penalty figure (for example, 1.62 versus 1.63 trillion won) and the framing as “rigging” versus “collusion.”
