adminDel Missier, one of three top Barclays executives to resign last week over a scandal that may trigger criminal prosecutions and implicate other banks, will appear before the Treasury Select Committee on Monday.
The Canadian banker allegedly instructed Barclays traders to manipulate inter-bank interest rates, believing he was following the wishes of Britain’s central bank, the Bank of England (BoE).
Barclays was fined £290 million (US$451 million) last month by British and US regulators for the attempted rigging of inter-bank lending rate Libor and its eurozone equivalent, Euribor.
Former Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond, who resigned hours before Ddel Missier, told the same parliamentary committee last week that Del Missier had
misinterpreted a conversation Diamond had held with BoE Deputy Governor Paul Tucker in 2008.
Diamond told lawmakers that in the phone call — which has drawn the central bank into a widening political storm over rate-rigging — Tucker told him that Barclays’
Libor submissions did not always need to be so high.
According to Diamond, Del Missier interpreted this as an instruction to submit lower rates, although Diamond himself did not.
Giving evidence to the committee on Monday, Tucker insisted he did not instruct the bank to manipulate the rates.
Adair Turner, chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority which fined Barclays for the rate-fixing, will also give evidence to the committee on Monday.
Barclays announced on Tuesday that US-born Diamond, who has become a symbol of excessive pay in Britain, will give up bonuses worth £20 million following his resignation, although he will still receive a final pay-off of around £2 million. — AFP.
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