India's RBI Penalizes 19 Banks For Violating Rules On Derivatives

India's central bank Tuesday said it penalized 19 banks including the country's top three lenders--State Bank of India (500112.BY), ICICI Bank Ltd. (532174.BY) and HDFC Bank Ltd. (500180.BY)--for failing to comply with rules on derivatives.

The penalty, ranging from 500,000 Indian rupees ($11,234) to INR1.5 million ($33,700), was imposed for violation of rules such as failure to carry out due diligence in regard to suitability of products and selling derivative products to users not having risk management policies, the central bank said in a notification.

The list of penalized banks also includes the local units of Barclays PLC (BARC.LN), BNP Paribas S.A. (BNP.FR), Citigroup Inc. (C), Credit Agricole S.A. (ACA.FR), Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (RBS.LN), Standard Chartered PLC (STAN.LN), Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Deutsche Bank AG (DB), Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. Ltd. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM).

The lenders were not immediately available for comment.

-By Nupur Acharya; Dow Jones Newswires; [phone]; [e-mail]