The International Swaps & Derivatives Association, a financial industry derivatives group, is being probed as part of a European Union antitrust investigation into how data on credit derivatives is shared.

Regulators found "indications that ISDA may have been involved in a coordinated effort of investment banks to delay or prevent exchanges from entering the credit derivatives business," the European Commission said in a statement today. The EU started a probe in April 2011 into whether 16 lenders, including Citigroup Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG, colluded by giving pricing information to data provider Markit Group Ltd.

The commission "is examining whether a number of investment banks may have used Markit, the leading provider of financial information in the CDS market, to foreclose the development of certain CDS trading platforms," the regulator said. "This could have been achieved through collusion or an abuse of a possible collective dominance."