BNP Paribas has filed a claim in a court in The Hague against Dutch broker platform, BinckBank, for its use of the term ‘turbo’ in its leverage certificates range.

The French bank claims that it inherited the ‘turbo’ tag after the acquisition of the Royal Bank of Scotland’s (RBS) investor products and equity derivatives (IP&ED) business and has asked the court in The Hague to prevent BinckBank from using the trademark in future.

A BNP Paribas spokesperson confirmed that a ruling on the claim is expected on September 9, but declined to comment further.

BinckBank used to distribute RBS’s turbo certificates up until a commission banned was implemented in the Netherlands in January 2014, and entered the domestic turbo certificates market with its own turbo-branded leverage products in July.

The French bank however may have to direct its claim to ABN Amro as well as the Dutch bank has its own turbo certificates range for retail investors in the market.

SRP data shows that both ABN Amro and BinckBank are marketing turbos in the Netherlands including 12,946 marketed by ABN Amro as the new entity that started from scratch after the RBS takeover, and 20,231 brought to market by RBS.

BinckBank appointed UBS as market maker. Unlike ABN Amro, Citi, Commerzbank, ING and RBS, who list their leverage products in the Euronext Amsterdam exchange - trading of the BinckBank turbos takes place via the Börse Stuttgart’s Citigroup Automated Trading System (Cats).

BinckBank turbos are exclusively available for clients of BinckBank in the Netherlands and provide investors with leverage exposure to underlying assets such as the local AEX-index, the DAX-index, many Dutch and international stocks, and precious metals.

RBS said recently that by mid-September BNP Paribas will take over the market-making activities of the majority of its structured products in the Netherlands including turbos, boosters, Royal AEX Obligatiesand memory coupon notes.

A BinckBank spokesperson told SRP that as long as the matter is sub judice the bank would refrain from commenting.

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