Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (RBS.LN), which is 81% owned by the U.K. Government, said Wednesday it is in late-stage settlement discussions with the U.K. Financial Services Authority, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice into submissions, communications and procedures around the setting of the London Interbank Offered Rate, or LIBOR, although the settlements remain to be agreed.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox Business Headlines
Tag Archives: LIBOR
Lawsuits contribute to big UBS loss in Q4
Switzerland‘s biggest bank UBS AG posted Tuesday a 1.9 billion francs ($2.1 billion) loss for the fourth quarter in the wake of a series of lawsuits, scandals and a wave of restructuring.
The Zurich-based bank attributed the loss mainly to “net charges for provisions for litigation, regulatory and similar matters as well as net restructuring charges and an own credit loss.” In contrast, UBS made a net profit of 324 million francs in the fourth quarter of 2011 despite a $2-billion rogue trading scandal.
UBS also ended 2012 with a loss of more than 2.2 billion francs ($2.4 billion), compared with a profit of 4.4 billion francs for 2011.
UBS is one of the world’s largest managers of private wealth assets and is on the list of the 29 “global systemically important banks” that the Basel, Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements, the central bank for central banks, considers too big to fail.
In December, UBS agreed to pay some $1.5 billion in fines to international regulators following a probe into the rigging of a key global interest rate. In admitting to fraud in its Japanese unit, UBS became the second bank, after Britain’s Barclays PLC, to settle over the rate-rigging scandal.
UBS and the reputation of the global banking industry suffered last year, battered by an industry-wide investigation into alleged manipulations of the benchmark LIBOR interest rate, short for London interbank offered rate. It’s also seen its reputation bruised by a London trial into a multibillion dollar trading scandal and ongoing tax evasion probes.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Barclays' finance director stepping down
Britain’s scandal-hit Barclays bank says finance director Chris Lucas is stepping down.
The bank said Sunday that Lucas and general counsel Mark Harding will leave once successors have been found. Barclays said that given the men’s seniority, that could take “a considerable time.”
Lucas is one of several past and present Barclays staff being investigated over whether the bank broke the rules when it took big cash infusions from Qatar‘s sovereign wealth fund in 2008.
Barclays also has seen several top executives, including CEO Bob Diamond, leave since a rate-fixing scandal erupted last year. Barclays was fined $453 million after it emerged that executives had been involved in a campaign to rig a key interest rate known as LIBOR.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
UK judge rejects Barclays' LIBOR anonymity bid
A British court has rejected an attempt by Barclays to shield the names of more than 100 present and former employees of the bank allegedly involved in manipulating a key interest rate index or who for other reasons came to the attention of investigators.
Justice Julian Flaux ruled Thursday that granting anonymity would be an affront to open justice. He noted that many names, including former CEO Bob Diamond, were already on the public record.
Barclays has admitted that employees, sometimes directed by senior executives, submitted false rates used for calculating the London interbank offered rate. Several global banks every day help compile the LIBOR, which is used to price trillions of dollars in global contracts.
The bank has already been fined about $450 million by U.S. and British agencies.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Let 'Em Beat Up On Banks
By Martin Sosnoff, Contributor Unlike Jamie Dimon, I don’t think people should stop picking on bankers. Lest we forget, UBS was fined $1.5 billion for manipulating LIBOR‘s rate structure and JPMorgan Chase dropped $6 billion in trading derivatives. Copy editors as yet wallow in blood and guts headlines over bankers’ foolish, illegal and costly capers.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest