A former trader at Dutch lender Rabobank has become the first to be banned from Britain's financial services industry for Libor interest rate rigging after he was convicted in the United States. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said on Tuesday that Paul Robson, a Briton who last year pleaded guilty to being part of a scheme to manipulate Rabobank's yen-denominated Libor rates, lacked honesty and integrity.
Libor (London interbank offered rate) is a benchmark which underpins around $450 trillion of financial products from mortgages to student loans worldwide. Since US regulators initiated a global investigation into Libor rates in 2008, US and European authorities have fined banks and brokerages around $6.0 billion, charged 20 men with criminal fraud-related offences and warned many others of possible civil sanctions.
Robson, nicknamed "Pooks", was Rabobank's head of money market and derivatives trading for north-east Asia in 2006 before being promoted to managing director and head of liquidity and finance for Rabobank Asia in late 2010. The 45-year-old, who is not in custody and is resident in the UK until his sentencing in 2017, is one of six former Rabobank employees to have been charged by US prosecutors.
In brazen computer chat exchanges with colleagues that have become familiar since banks started settling regulatory rigging allegations in 2012, Robson was asked to lower or "bump up" rates to help individual trading positions. "Will set them high and dry skip," he responds in one exchange in 2006. "Oh dear ... my poor customers ... hehehe!!" exclaims another rate submitter when Robson warns him he will set "an obscenely high 1m (one-month rate) again today", according to US court documents released alongside the FCA's statement on Tuesday.
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