“We are being dishonest by definition and [we are] at risk of damaging our reputation in the market and with the regulators.”
Thus wrote one Barclays banker, on December 4 2007, to “manager E”, according to regulatory documents published this week by the UK Financial Services Authority. Five years on it is clear that the subject of those prophetic words – the price-manipulation scandal in the interbank lending market whose vast scale was unveiled by regulators this week – has done a lot more than just reputational damage.
Barclays has paid a record £290m in combined fines to settle investigations by the FSA, the US Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the US futures regulator.