Dive Summary:

• In its most ambitious market manipulation crackdown yet, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ordered Barclays Bank PLC and four of its traders to pay a $453 fine within 30 days for manipulating electric energy prices in California and other western markets between November 2006 and December 2008.
• FERC also ordered the British bank to disgorge $34.9 million in “unjust profits” and interest to Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Programs of Arizona, California, Oregon, and Washington.
• The bank will fight the FERC order in a likely federal court stand-off considered FERC’s biggest market manipulation case to date. FERC proposed the fines last October 2012 after regulators found the bank purposefully lost money in physical power markets to benefit its financial position. But Barclays has contested any wrongdoing and will likely refuse the fine, forcing the matter to court.

From the article:
“The U.S. case is expected to be a major test of FERC's enforcement powers, expanded by Congress in 2005 legislation that had its genesis in the Enron electricity manipulation scandals in the western United States earlier in the decade.”