Barclays fined record £60m by FSA fine

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has fined Barclays Bank a record £59.5m for manipulating the interest rates at which banks lend to each other.

Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond and three other of the banks' most senior executives will forgo their bonuses for this year.

Including the record FSA fine, Barclays has agreed to pay penalties totalling £290m to UK and US authorities.

Barclays said its actions "fell well short of standards".

The FSA said: "Barclays' misconduct was serious and widespread."

"The integrity of benchmark reference rates such as Libor is of fundamental importance to UK and international financial markets."

The misconduct relates to the daily setting of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) and the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor).

These are two of the most important interest rates in the global financial markets and directly influence the value of trillions of dollars of financial deals between banks and other institutions.

Barclays said it had reached settlements with the FSA, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the United States Department of Justice Fraud Section (DOJ) and the other panel members to the bodies that set various interbank rates.

The resolution is part of an industry-wide investigation into the setting of interbank offered rates across a range of currencies between 2005 and 2009.

Source & Image : BBC