Barclays to pay 290 mln pounds to settle Libor probe

The settlement raises fresh questions about the reliability of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, w hich underpins some $360 trln of loans and financial contracts.

The attempted manipulation, which according to authorities took place from 2005 through 2009, meant that millions of borrowers paid too little or too much interest on their debt.

The U.S. government implicated senior executives at Barclays in its settlement. It cited reams of emails that showed how the bank sought to move Libor rates to profit on trades and to hide its high borrowing costs during the financial crisis.

Barclays Chief Executive Bob Diamond acknowledged on Wednesday that the settlement would damage customer trust in the bank. He said he and other senior executives would forgo their bonuses this year. Much of the improper trading and manipulation occurred under the watch of Diamond, a fixed-income trader who replaced John Varley as CEO in 2011.

Libor underlies everything from derivatives trades to U.S. consumer credit card rates to loans as far afield as those financing Turkish phone networks. Barclays also tried to manipulate Euribor, a separately managed series of euro-denominated rates.

The bank settled on a civil basis with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority. The Justice Department is still conducting a criminal investigation.

The broader Libor probe dates to at least 2011 and includes Japanese, Canadian and Swiss authorities.

Last year, Swiss bank UBS AG agreed to cooperate with U.S. investigators in exchange for conditional immunity from prosecution. Earlier this year, in court documents filed in Ontario Superior Court, a Canadian antitrust regulator said that a "cooperating party" had provided information on how the alleged Libor manipulation took place.

ON THE "BIG BOY" TRAIL

Investigators were helped by the extensive email traffic among Barclays employees involved. In one email, after a Barclays swaps trader asked for low levels to be reported on certain short-term rates, an employee who submitted rates for the survey responded by email, "Done … for you big boy …"

Market participants said that fewer traders have faith in Libor as a benchmark now.

The series of interest rates are determined based on a daily poll of banks regarding their estimated borrowing costs. Libor is so deeply entrenched in financial markets that there are few plausible alternatives, experts have said.

Barclays shares closed 1.9% higher in London, as shareholders said they were satisfied the issue was closed.

Diamond joined the bank in 1996 and established Barclays as a leading investment bank.

Before taking over as CEO, Diamond had been president and chief of Barclays' investment bank. The other officials who will forgo a bonus this year are finance chief Chris Lucas, chief operating officer Jerry del Missier, and Rich Ricci, chief executive of corporate and investment banking.

Around when the market for short-term debt known as commercial paper seized up in the fall of 2007, top Barclays treasury executives held a conference call with the desk responsible for submitting Libor, according to the CFTC order.

The person responsible for posting Barclays' borrowing rate said in a November 2007 phone call that if the bank submitted a correct rate, it would be higher than other banks and cause "a shit storm." According to the CFTC order, "The supervisor asked that the issue be taken 'upstairs,' meaning that it should be discussed among more senior levels of Barclays' management."

Ultimately, the bank provided a lower rate that was the same as a competing bank.

RECORD FINES

The CFTC ordered the bank to pay a $200 million penalty, the largest civil monetary penalty it has ever imposed.

Barclays also settled with the U.S. Department of Justice and Britain's Financial Services A uthority; it will pay fines o f $160 million and $92.8 million, respectively. The FSA fine was also a record.

Libor is set daily for 10 major currencies and 15 borrowing periods, ranging from overnight loans to 12 months.

Thomson Reuters Corp is the British Bankers' Association's official agent for the daily calculation and publishing of Libor.

An economist who has studied Libor manipulation said that banks should be surveyed about their actual borrowing costs, instead of their estimated borrowing costs.

"Estimates are much easier to manipulate," said Rosa Abrantes-Metz, a principal at Global Economics Group and an adjunct professor at NYU's Stern School of Business.

The CFTC order suggested that the BBA knew of problems. In 2008, according to the CFTC order, a Barclays treasury executive told the BBA the bank hadn't reported accurate borrowing costs.

"We're clean, but we're dirty-clean, rather than clean-clean," the executive told an unnamed BBA manager, who responded, "No one's clean-clean."