At least three banks seen central to Libor rigging
With Draghi managing taking the focus away from the great LIBOR scandal, we shouldn’t forget about the LIBOR situation. As we all know, there can’t be only one bank involved in the scandal. Reuters brings some more clarity on the subject.
New details from court documents and sources close to the Libor scandal investigation suggest that groups of traders working at three major European banks were heavily involved in rigging global benchmark interest rates.
Some of those traders, including one who used to work at Barclays Plc in New York, still have senior positions on Wall Street trading desks.
Until now, most of the attention has involved traders at Barclays, which last month reached a $453 million settlement with U.S. and UK authorities for its role in the manipulation of rates. Now, it is becoming clear that traders from at least two other banks – UK-based Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Switzerland’s UBS AG – played a central role.
Among them, the three banks employed more than a dozen traders who sought to influence rates in either dollar, euro or yen rates. Some of the traders who are being probed have worked for several banks under scrutiny, raising the possibility that the rate fixing became more ingrained as traders changed jobs. (Full article here).