Hungary’s financial regulator fines Bloomberg

Hungary’s financial regulator Pszaf fined Bloomberg News on Thursday after its Budapest office published incorrect information about the central bank’s rate decision before it was announced April 23.

Veronika Gulyas of Dow Jones Newswires writes, “Pszaf fined Bloomberg 10 million forints ($44,216) for disrupting the market. The regulator said Bloomberg corrected the mistake within a minute, took steps to establish a control mechanism to prevent such errors in the future and was cooperative throughout the inquiry that followed the incident.

“Bloomberg declined to comment on the subject.

“On April 23, the Hungarian central bank announced its rate call at 1200 GMT as usual. The decision, a rate cut of 0.25 percentage point to an all-time low of 4.75%, was in line with expectations. Minutes before the decision, Bloomberg reported that the bank had cut the key rate to 1.00%, by mistake. The forint immediately weakened against euro, but returned to its earlier level as soon as the correction was made.”

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