Market Commentary and Intraday News

British lawmakers criticize ex-Barclays CEO

279 days ago

(AP:LONDON) British lawmakers say former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond offered a "highly selective" account to a Parliamentary hearing on the banking rate-fixing scandal.

In a report published Saturday into manipulation of a key inter-bank interest rate, Parliament's Treasury committee demanded changes to regulation of the banking industry.

Barclays has been fined $453 million by U.S. and British agencies for feeding false data which went into calculations of the London interbank offered rate, known as LIBOR, a market index which influences the costs of a range of financial instruments, including home mortgages.

At a July hearing, Diamond's evidence was "at times highly selective" and "fell well short of the standard that Parliament expects," the legislators said.

They called for changes in the law to make it easier to prosecute attempts to manipulate rates.

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