Official Journal of the European Union

C series

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C/2025/4147

(Case C-379/25 P)

(C/2025/4147)

Language of the case: English

Parties

Appellants: UBS Group AG, UBS AG (represented by: C. Riis-Madsen, advokat, I. Ioannidis, dikigoros)

Other party to the proceedings: European Commission

Form of order sought

The appellants claim that the Court should:

—set aside the judgment under appeal to the extent it rejects the appellants’ action regarding the methodology applied by the Commission in determining the fine; and

—make use of its power to give final judgment by annulling the Decision of the Commission in Case AT.40324 (<span class="oj-super oj-note-tag">1</span>) ; and/or exercising its own jurisdiction to impose a lesser and proportionate fine; or alternative, to refer the case back to the General Court; and

—order the Commission to pay the costs of the appellants in the present proceedings.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The appellants raise three grounds for setting aside the Contested Judgment.

With the first ground, the appellants argue that the General Court erred in law by holding that the notion of ‘turnover’ of financial institutions, as set out in Directive 86/635 (<span class="oj-super oj-note-tag">2</span>) and the case-law of the EU Courts, cannot be relied upon when calculating the fine, because Directive 86/635 has a different purpose than the one pursued by the imposition of the fine and the Fining Guidelines (<span class="oj-super oj-note-tag">3</span>).

With the second ground, the appellants assert that the General Court (i) erred in law or in any case distorted the facts of the case by holding that the Commission did not violate the Fining Guidelines because it did not apply any ‘deterrence factor’ in calculating the discount factor of 99.965 % for the proxy used for the value of sales; (ii) erred in law by holding that the Commission did not depart from the Fining Guidelines; and (iii) erred in law by holding that the Commission did not violate its obligation to provide sufficient explanations as to the taking into account the deterrent effect of its fine in recital 822 of the Commission Decision.

with the third ground, the appellants claim that the General Court erred in law or in any case distorted the facts of the case by holding that both UBS’s ‘net value traded’ and its ‘adjusted net value traded’ approaches were not appropriate for the purpose of implementing the Guidelines, contrary to all the evidence submitted by the appellants during the administrative procedure and before the General Court.

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(1) OJ 2021, C 418, p. 11.

(2) Council Directive 86/635/EEC of 8 December 1986 on the annual accounts and consolidated accounts of banks and other financial institutions (OJ 1986, L 372, p. 1).

(3) Guidelines on the method of setting fines imposed pursuant to Article 23(2)(a) of Regulation No 1/2003 (OJ 2006, C 210, p. 2).

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ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2025/4147/oj

ISSN 1977-091X (electronic edition)

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