Banks rigging markets are like 'careless fighter pilots'

By James Titcomb
The Telegraph, London
Thursday, January 29, 2015

A senior Bank of England official has compared banks' failures to prevent Libor and foreign exchange rigging to a fighter pilot ignoring safety checks, saying it should be in the banks’'own interests to stamp out bad behaviour.

Andrew Hauser, the BoE's director of markets strategy, said ensuring good conduct had become misaligned with profitability at banks, causing systematic failures that led to traders ripping off customers in an attempt to make money.

He said that despite an "enormous" focus on improving standards at many banks, promises to reform could become like a quickly-forgotten new year's resolution if rules are not put in place to make sure it is in a bank's best interests to do so.

Banks have been fined billions of pounds for allowing traders to manipulate key benchmarks such as interbank lending rates and currency markets, colluding to fix them at the expense of customers.

Officials have said that repeated instances of bad behaviour, some even occurring after banks were fined, show that banks have not learned their lessons from the scandals. ...

... For the remainder of the report:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/bank-of-england/11377027/Banks-riggin...