The three former NatWest bankers who pleaded guilty last month to an Enron-related fraud are still waiting to hear how much of their 37-month jail sentence will be served in the notoriously unpleasant US penal system. Three other British executives who this week also entered a plea bargain in Houston, Texas – in this case, for a price-fixing cartel in the oil industry – have much greater certainty about their incarceration. They are about to return to the UK where they will plead guilty to British-focused price-fixing offences. This means they will serve their sentences closer to home in a penal system with more generous parole terms (though they may have to go back to the US to serve the rest of their time there if the UK courts impose shorter sentences).

The arrangement has much to commend it – and not just in terms of saving everyone money and stress. It hands Britain’s Office of Fair Trading its first successful cartel prosecution since price-fixing was criminalised in the 2002 Enterprise Act. And it shows a degree of international co-operation in tackling price-fixing which is highly damaging for honest businesses that do not indulge in this anti-competitive practice. The US is to be commended for encouraging other countries to pursue criminal prosecutions against cartels as part of a global crackdown on price-fixing.