Friday, 23 January 2015

Old Lady inquiry sparks MPs' ire: Lord Grabiner's foreign exchange probe leaves public in the dark

THE BANK of England risks losing access to vital sources of market data thanks to banks cracking down on traders gossiping, Lord Grabiner warned yesterday. Top barrister Grabiner was hired to investigate what Bank of England staff might have known about foreign exchange manipulation. 

Lord Grabiner, the barrister who has led an investigation into the foreign exchange rate rigging scandal, said the $5.3tn-a-day forex market needs to be regulated – but not too much, or the City could lose business to Frankfurt or New York.

Appointed by the Bank of England last March to review allegations that its staff knew about foreign exchange rate manipulation, Grabiner told MPs on the Treasury Committee: “One of the curiosities of this marketplace is that it was not regulated.”

The Financial Conduct Authority fined five leading banks including the bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland a total of £1.1bn in November for rigging the foreign currency markets.

Penalties from the US authorities brought the total tally to a record £2.6bn. The investigations centred on traders’ use of chat rooms to coordinate currency rates in the minutes leading up to a daily 4pm “fix”.


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