UK: FCA fines, bans ex-RBS Libor trader

Britain’s financial watchdog fined ex-Royal Bank of Scotland trader Neil Danziger £250,000 pounds (US$338,000) on Monday and barred him from working in financial services.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said in a statement it had found that between 2007 and 2010 Danziger, who traded products referenced to the Japanese Yen variant of Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate), was knowingly involved in the bank’s manipulation of the benchmark rate.

Danziger disputes the FCA’s findings and feels he is being “scapegoated for the systemic problems related to Libor”, his lawyer, Ben Rose, a partner at law firm Hickman and Rose, said.

Danziger was dismissed over Libor-rigging at the end of 2011, after nine years with RBS, which was fined £390 million (US$528.9 million) by UK and US authorities for its part in the global scandal that engulfed some of the world’s biggest banks.

“Mr Danziger’s reckless disregard of these standards (of market conduct) has no place in the financial services industry,” Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said.

Full Content: Bloomberg

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