Big Business

Taking the spot for the company which has been fined the most since 2000 was the Bank of America, who have had to pay an incredible $82.8 billion across 219 individual fines over the years, many of which have come about as a result of the 2008 financial crisis and relate to things such as mortgages and financial disclosures. The biggest single fine that they’ve faced added up to $16.65 billion as part of a settlement to the Department of Justice over the sale of risky, mortgage-backed securities prior to the recession, the largest settlement between a single company and the federal government of all time.

In second place was another financial giant, JPMorgan Chase, which was forced to pay over $35 billion as part of 162 fines. Again, their biggest fine came about as a result of the sale of mortgage-backed securities in the mid-noughties and had to pay back $13 billion to the Justice Department.

BP (formerly known as British Petroleum) isn’t just the company that has paid back the third-highest amount in fines, they also hold the dubious honor of having paid the single biggest one-off fine in history, paying $20.8 billion as part of its part in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the biggest oil spill in history. All told, the incident ended up costing the company in excess of $65 billion in cleanup costs, charges, and penalties.

Businesses in the financial sector were by far the most likely to find themselves in trouble, paying a total of over $331 billion over the last 20 years, which is more than all over industries combined! The likes of Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase are amongst the biggest fines in this sector, as well as other major banks and financial institutions such as Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, UBS, and Goldman Sachs.

In second place was pharmaceuticals, with over $56 billion paid in fines over the last two decades. The industry is subject to strict regulations and has to meet a high standard of due diligence, with notable examples of pharma companies falling foul of the rules including the $8.34 billion paid by Purdue Pharma to the federal government just a few months ago, the largest fine ever paid out by a pharmaceutical company.

In third place was the oil and gas industry, which was largely due to the incredible fines paid by BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Generally speaking though, oil and gas is another industry that is heavily regulated, and other companies that have been hit with big fines over the years have included Occidental Petroleum and Exxon Mobil.

‘Toxic assets’ is a term that was coined during the financial crash and refers to investments that are difficult or impossible to sell due to a collapse in demand for them. Vast amounts of these toxic assets were sold in the build-up to the crisis, with some of the biggest culprits being the Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Companies also have an increasing responsibility towards the environment and while many of the fines in this category fall on the shoulder of BP due to their role in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, although many others have had to pay hefty fines, including Volkswagen, who got in trouble over the 2016 emissions scandal, for which they were fined $14.7 billion.

Investor protection is very similar to toxic security abuses and refers to instances where a company has deceived investors into making purchases or sales on the basis of false information. Again, it’s the major financial firms that have most commonly been hit with fines for this offense, including, Bank of America, UBS and Citigroup.