12-Feb-2012 - Inquiry on interest fixing shakes the City as sixteen RBS workers are fired

Visted 16 times

Inquiry on interest fixing shakes the City By Simon Watkins Last updated at 11:22 PM on 11th February 2012 A fresh scandal is sweeping the City this weekend after it emerged that several banks and brokers, including taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland, dismissed staff amid an investigation into alleged rigging of one the world’s key measures of interest rates. Three London employees of RBS have been dismissed in connection with the investigation by regulators into Libor – the rate banks charge each other to borrow money. Other banks caught up in the Reebok NFL jerseys probe include Barclays, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and UBS. ICAP, a leading broker headed by Michael Spencer, a prominent Conservative fundraiser and former party treasurer, has also been drawn in, with a trader reportedly suspended. Little known outside the City, Libor is crucial to billions of pounds of trades and is a key measure for calculating anything from corporate debts to mortgages. A sharp rise in Libor in 2007 was regarded as one of the early warning signs of the credit crunch, as banks started to charge each other more and more to borrow money. This weekend it emerged that RBS had sacked an investment adviser and two traders in the autumn. The three dismissals came on top of the sacking of Tan Chi Min from RBS’s Singapore operation last year. His departure, now the subject of a wrongful dismissal claim, involves an allegation that he tried to influence the bank’s cheap nfl jerseys Libor quote to boost his trading position. RBS and ICAP said they do not comment on staff matters. Both indicated they were co-operating with the authorities. The Financial Services Authority is working on the issue, as is the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the Swiss Competition Commission and regulators in Japan. Their investigations are said to focus on three concerns. First is that Libor rates may have been held down artificially in the financial crisis. This would have made banks look more secure than they were. The second is whether bankers setting Libor rates leaked their data to traders ahead of their official release. The third is whether traders at the banks and at organisations such as hedge funds may have tried wholesale nba jerseys to influence the rate by making suggestions or demands on the bankers providing the Libor quotes.

Comments (0)Post Comment View Whole Blog