The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has banned a former Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Libor submitter from any regulated financial activity.
Paul White used to work as a Japanese Yen and Swiss Franc Libor submitted at RBS and allowed himself to be influenced by derivatives traders into submitting inaccurate Libor figures.
From March 2007 to November 2010, White received 68 communications from JPY and CHF derivatives traders requesting submissions that favoured their trading positions.
The FCA’s director of enforcement and market oversight, Mark Steward, said: “As a Libor submitter Mr White had an obligation to ensure the submissions he made were proper ones. By allowing his submissions to be set, in effect, by those with collateral financial interests in the outcome, Mr White recklessly disregarded the risk – the obvious risk – that his Libor submission might corrupt Libor’s integrity.”
White has been banned from any regulated activity and publicly censured. He would also have faced a £250,000 fine were it not for his extreme financial hardship, the FCA said.
Steward said the penalties were intended to deter others from trying to manipulate and damage the integrity of benchmarks in the future.