Germany’s biggest lender has been fined $2.5 billion by US and UK regulators for manipulating market key rates including Libor, the benchmark for interest rates on trillions of dollars of financial contracts.
The bank admitted in Thursday’s settlement that its employees rigged the yen Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) and the Brussels and Tokyo equivalents, Euribor and Tibor, to benefit their trading book and those of traders at other banks, RT reported. This is the biggest fine in a Libor case to date.
The fixing of the interest rates by Deutsche Bank employees in London and Frankfurt from 2005 to 2009 was deliberate, and the employees were aware that it was wrong, the New York State Superintendent of Financial Services Benjamin M. Lawsky said on Thursday.
“Deutsche Bank employees engaged in a widespread effort to manipulate benchmark interest rates for financial gain.” He also added that it’s “individuals who do deliberate wrongdoing while markets do not manipulate themselves.”
Deutsche Bank also acknowledged that its internal monitoring systems were insufficient to prevent the manipulation of Libor, the statements from regulators said Thursday.
The authorities have ordered seven managers suspected of involvement in the rigging to be fired. They are reportedly among more than two dozen employees believed to have taken part. Most have already left the bank.
The $2.5 billion penalty on Deutsche Bank includes $600 million to the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), $800 million to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), $775 million to the US Department of Justice (DOJ), and approximately $340 million to the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
The verdict puts an end to a long-running investigation by US federal and New York State regulators and law-enforcement officials, as well as the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.
