Never ending saga of financial scandals with no end in sight! The less said the better! Read on!
Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc
managers condoned and participated in the manipulation of global
interest rates, indicating that wrongdoing extended beyond the four
traders the bank has fired.
In an instant-message conversation in late 2007, Jezri Mohideen, then the bank’s head of yen products in Singapore, instructed colleagues in the U.K. to lower RBS’s submission to the London
interbank offered rate that day, according to two people with knowledge
of the discussion. No reason was given in the message as to why he
wanted a lower figure. The rate-setter agreed, submitting the number
Mohideen sought, the people said
Mohideen wasn’t alone. RBS traders and their managers routinely sought to influence the firm’s Libor submissions between 2007 and 2010 to profit from derivatives bets, according to employees, regulators and lawyers interviewed by Bloomberg News. Traders also communicated with counterparts at other firms to discuss where rates should be set, one person said.
“This kind of activity was widespread in the industry,” said David Greene, a senior partner at law firm Edwin Coe LLP in London. “A lot of the traders didn’t consider this behavior to be wrong. They took it as the practice of the trade. This is how things operated, and it seemed harmless.”
Regulators are now probing RBS’s yen, Swiss franc and U.S. dollar sales-and-trading businesses, all part of the fixed- income division Fred Goodwin expanded before he was ousted as CEO in 2008, said two people who asked not to be identified because the bank’s internal investigation, begun more than two years ago, is still in progress. Investigators are focusing on the firm’s swaps, inflation-trading and foreign-exchange teams, as well as on money-market traders who made daily Libor submissions, the people said.
Source -- read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-24/rbs-managers-said-to-condone-manipulation-of-libor-rates.html
RBS Managers Condoned Libor Manipulation
A visitor enters the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc
managers condoned and participated in the manipulation of global
interest rates, indicating that wrongdoing extended beyond the four
traders the bank has fired.
Regulators are now probing RBS’s
yen, Swiss franc and U.S. dollar sales-and-trading businesses, all part
of the fixed-income division Fred Goodwin expanded before he was ousted
as CEO in 2008, said two people who asked not to be identified.
Photographer: Raul
Mohideen wasn’t alone. RBS traders and their managers routinely sought to influence the firm’s Libor submissions between 2007 and 2010 to profit from derivatives bets, according to employees, regulators and lawyers interviewed by Bloomberg News. Traders also communicated with counterparts at other firms to discuss where rates should be set, one person said.
“This kind of activity was widespread in the industry,” said David Greene, a senior partner at law firm Edwin Coe LLP in London. “A lot of the traders didn’t consider this behavior to be wrong. They took it as the practice of the trade. This is how things operated, and it seemed harmless.”
Internal Investigation
RBS, 81 percent owned by the British government, is one of at least a dozen banks being probed by regulators worldwide over allegations that traders colluded to manipulate the benchmark interest rate so they could profit from bets on interest-rate derivatives. Barclays Plc (BARC), Britain’s second-biggest bank, was fined 290 million pounds ($470 million) in June for rigging the rate, used for more than $300 trillion of securities ranging from mortgages to student loans. Chief Executive Officer Robert Diamond and Chairman Marcus Agius resigned in the aftermath.Regulators are now probing RBS’s yen, Swiss franc and U.S. dollar sales-and-trading businesses, all part of the fixed- income division Fred Goodwin expanded before he was ousted as CEO in 2008, said two people who asked not to be identified because the bank’s internal investigation, begun more than two years ago, is still in progress. Investigators are focusing on the firm’s swaps, inflation-trading and foreign-exchange teams, as well as on money-market traders who made daily Libor submissions, the people said.
Source -- read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-24/rbs-managers-said-to-condone-manipulation-of-libor-rates.html
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