On March 15th a London’s Financial Times report came out that regulators in the U.S, U.K, and Japan suspected that big banks have conspired to manipulate the LIBOR benchmark rates between 2006 and 2008. One of the suspected banks involved, UBS has received a subpoena from the U.S. SEC, the CFTC, and the US Department of Justice. The investigation went as further to say that a breach in the “Chinese wall” rules privacy could be at fault. Chinese wall in this instance is the information barrier within a firm to separate and isolate persons who make investment decisions from person who are privy to undisclosed material information which can influence those decisions.
This breach questions Barclays Bank improper influence on its daily submissions to the daily Libor survey. These daily rate surveys are submitted by 16 of the most powerful banks in the world and account for $10 Trillion of loans and $350 Trillion of interest-rate derivatives globally. So if improper actions are to found this could cause a mess of legal disputes between lenders and borrowers in the future. In the mean time here are the rates of Libor from 2006.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/barclays-reportedly-a-focus-of-libor-probe-2011-03-25?link=kiosk
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