Senior British officials said they did not receive warnings from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York about the rate-rigging scandal during the financial crisis of 2008.
Speaking to a British parliamentary committee on Tuesday, Mervyn A King, governor of the Bank of England, the country’s central bank, said discussions with American authorities had instead focused on ways to improve the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.
Timothy F Geithner, who then ran the New York Fed, sent an e-mail to King in June 2008 that outlined reforms to the Libor system. They included recommendations that British officials “strengthen governance and establish a credible reporting procedure” and “eliminate incentive to misreport,” according to documents released last week.
The Bank of England governor said the correspondence with Geithner, who is now the United States Treasury secretary, did not represent a warning about potential illegal activity related to Libor.
“At no stage did he or anyone else at the New York Fed raise any concerns with the Bank that they had seen any wrongdoing,” King told the parliamentary committee on Tuesday. “There was no suggestion of fraudulent behaviour.”
King also provided further detail about his discussions with Geithner about Libor.
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The two men met in Basel, Switzerland, in May 2008 during a regular meeting of central bankers from the world’s leading economies. During a conversation, King said he had asked Geithner to submit suggestions about potential changes to the Libor system, according to King’s testimony on Tuesday.
The discussion was followed by several phone calls between Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England, and William C Dudley, the current president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who was the executive vice president of its markets group at the time of the discussions.
King said the New York Fed did not share internal memos, which questioned whether international banks were accurately reporting their Libor submissions. US authorities began collecting information as early as 2007 about the potential problems with the rate-setting process.
“Our contacts at Libor contributing banks have indicated a tendency to underreport actual borrowing costs,” New York Fed officials wrote in one of the memos, “to limit the potential for speculation about the institutions’ liquidity problems.”
King said some of the recommendations about changes to Libor that Geithner had sent in 2008 were included in a report by the British Bankers’ Association, the trade body that oversees the rate. The industry association released a review in late 2008 that outlined changes to the Libor process.
“At no stage did the New York Fed express any concerns about the final outcome,” King told the parliamentary committee.
Senior British officials did not believe the New York Fed’s recommendations were a warning that Libor was being manipulated, according to Tucker of the Bank of England. Suggestions from American authorities included how to “eliminate incentive to misreport” Libor submissions, as well as expanding the number of international banks that participated in the rate-setting.
The recommendations “didn’t set off alarm bells,” Tucker said on Tuesday.
Tucker’s role in the rate manipulation scandal was again questioned after new emails were released on Tuesday that detail his discussions with Robert E Diamond Jr, the former chief executive of Barclays.
Documents from the British bank and government authorities show that the Bank of England official called Diamond in October, 2008 to discuss the firm’s funding position at the height of the financial crisis. The conversation was later misinterpreted by Jerry del Missier, a top Barclays executive, as an instruction from the British central bank to lower the firm’s Libor submissions.
The new emails released by the Bank of England show that Tucker had written to the former Barclays chief about Libor as earlier as May, 2008.
The documents also illustrate a close relationship between Diamond and the government official. After it was announced that Tucker would become the deputy governor of the Bank of England in December, 2008, Diamond emailed to congratulate him: “Well done, man. I am really, really proud of you,” the former Barlcays chief wrote.
Tucker was equally friendly in his response. “Thanks so much Bob. You’ve been an absolute brick through this,” he said in an email.
British lawmakers also questioned the senior officials on Tuesday about the steps that led to Diamond’s resignation in early July. The British bank agreed to a $450 million settlement in June in connection with the manipulation of Libor.
Two days after the settlement was announced, Adair Turner, chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority, talked to the bank’s chairman, Marcus Agius, about whether Diamond was the right person to lead Barclays.
The British regulator had previously raised concerns about the bank’s corporate culture, and Turner said there were questions about whether Diamond was the most appropriate individual to lead the changes in governance inside Barclays.
The conversation was followed by a discussion between King and Agius on July 2, during which King said that Diamond no longer had the support of the Financial Services Authority.
After the discussion, Agius held a conference call with the bank’s nonexecutive directors, who decided to ask Diamond to resign.
“If Bob Diamond had stayed on, I strongly suspect that it would have been to the disadvantage of shareholders as well,” Turner told the parliamentary committee on Tuesday.
© 2012 The New York Times News Service