The British Bankers' Association said it's prepared to give upoversight of the London interbank offered rate following claimstraders manipulated the benchmark.
|Financial Services Authority Managing Director Martin Wheatleybegan a review into the governance of the rate after Barclays Plc,Britain's second-biggest lender, paid a record 290 million-pound($471 million) fine in June for manipulating the benchmark.Regulators worldwide are probing at least a dozen banks globallyover allegations traders tried to rig the rate.
|“If Mr. Wheatley's recommendations include a change ofresponsibility for LIBOR, the BBA will support that,” theLondon-based lobby group said in a statement today.
|The BBA's role as guardian of the reference for more than $300trillion of securities has been under pressure since the Bank forInternational Settlements first raised concern in 2008 that thebenchmark was being manipulated. The BBA's response was brandedinadequate by the Bank of England, while U.S. Treasury SecretaryTimothy Geithner has said private, unregulated bodies such as theBBA shouldn't oversee rates such as Libor.
|The BBA represents more than 200 banks and lobbies policy makersand regulators on behalf of the industry. The century-old lobbygroup helped to introduce Libor in January 1986 to cement London'sdominance in the markets for syndicated loans and interest-rateswaps. The benchmark is determined by a daily poll carried out onbehalf of the BBA that asks banks to estimate how much it wouldcost to borrow from each other for different periods and indifferent currencies.
|Bloomberg News
|Copyright 2018 Bloomberg. All rightsreserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten,or redistributed.
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