Page 36 - Bank Case Studies

The collusion had been discovered by internal emails, first of Barclays

and later of other banks which served as evidence. In 2007, a first

internal email of Barclays was sent to, among others, officials of the
World Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Dutch

Ministry of Finance. This email reported on ‘unrealistically low

Libors’. The FSA also presented evidence and in one instance, a
trader who recounted a conversation in which he had "begged" the

submitter to put in a lower Libor figure. Other examples given were:

"I'm like, dude, you're killing us," he said. His manager

replied, "just tell him to... put it low".

In turn, the staff submitting the data would respond to the traders'

requests.

"For you…anything," said one. "Done… for you big boy,"

said another.

Moreover, Barclays staff were frequently lobbied by its derivatives
traders to put in figures which would benefit their trading positions,

in order to produce a profit for the bank. Likewise, during the credit

crisis they put in artificially low figures, to avoid the suspicion that
Barclays was under financial stress and thus having to borrow at

noticeably higher rates than its competitors. The FSA pointed out
that there appeared to be an "accepted culture" amongst some of

Barclays’ staff who were quite open in their attempts to lobby their

colleagues who submitted estimates of their own interbank lending
rates to the BBA. An external trader thanked Barclays’ for its LIBOR

submission:

“Dude. I owe you big time! Come over one day after work

and I’m opening a bottle of Bollinger”.