The European Commission has accused 13 major international investment banks of abusing their power to stop rivals from offering alternative ways to trade lucrative credit derivatives.The banks, including Barclays and HSBC, are charged with trying to prevent competitors from trading profitable products including credit default swaps, an insurance used by investors to shield themselves against borrowers who fail to repay their debts.US investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, and European lenders, Deutsche Bank and UBS, are also suspected of using anti-competitive practices."The Commission takes the preliminary view that the banks acted collectively to shut out exchanges from the market because they feared that exchange trading would have reduced their revenues from acting as intermediaries in the OTC [over-the-counter] market," the European regulator said in a statement.The watchdog has also claims financial data company, Markit, which compiles information on credit derivatives trading, played a role in blocking competition. It follows a two-year investigation by the European authorities, which found that big banks were preventing rival exchanges from trading credit derivatives. RD