Libor Lies Revealed in Rigging of $300 Trillion Benchmark - Bloomberg

Libor Lies Revealed in Rigging of $300 Trillion Benchmark - Bloomberg


Danziger typically would have swiveled in his chair, tapped White on the shoulder and relayed the request to him, people who worked on the trading floor say. Instead, as White was away that day, Danziger input the rate himself. There were no rules at RBS and other banks prohibiting derivatives traders, who stood to benefit from where Libor was set, from submitting the rate -- a flaw exploited by some traders to boost their bonuses.
The next morning, RBS said it would have to pay 0.97 percent to borrow in yen for three months, up from 0.94 percent the previous day. The Edinburgh-based bank was the only one of 16 surveyed to raise its submission that day, inflating that day’s rate by one-fifth of a basis point, or 0.002 percent. On a $50 billion portfolio of interest-rate swaps, RBS could have gained as much as $250,000.
Events like those that took place on RBS’s trading floor, across the road from Bishopsgate police station and Dirty Dicks, a 267-year-old pub, are at the heart of what is emerging as the biggest and longest-running scandal in banking history. Even in an era of financial deception -- of firms peddling bad mortgages, hedge-fund managers trading on inside information and banks laundering money for drug cartels and terrorists -- the manipulation of Libor stands out for its breadth and audacity.
Details are only now revealing just how far-reaching the scam was.
“Pretty much anything you could do to increase the revenue of your organization appeared legitimate,” says Martin Taylor, chief executive officer of London-based Barclays Plc from 1994 to 1998. “Here was the market doing something blatantly dishonest. I never imagined that people in the financial markets were saints, but you expect some moral standards.”

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