Hi there,

If you think Democracy Now!’s reporting is a critical line of defense against war, climate catastrophe and authoritarianism, please make your donation of $10 or more right now. Today, a generous donor will DOUBLE your donation, which means it’ll go 2x as far to support our independent journalism. Democracy Now! is funded by you, and that’s why we’re counting on your donation to keep us going strong. Please give today. Every dollar makes a difference—in fact, gets doubled! Thank you so much.
-Amy Goodman

Non-commercial news needs your support.

We rely on contributions from you, our viewers and listeners to do our work. If you visit us daily or weekly or even just once a month, now is a great time to make your monthly contribution.

Please do your part today.

Donate

Barclays CEO Resigns over Loan Fixing

HeadlineJul 05, 2012

The chief executive of the banking giant Barclays has resigned over a major interest-rate fixing scandal that has already ousted the company’s chairman. Bob Diamond stepped down just days after Barclays was fined $453 million by U.S. and British authorities for manipulating key interest rates. A British probe found Barclays conspired to manipulate the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, which provides the basis for rates on trillions of dollars in transactions across the globe. The manipulation meant millions of borrowers paid the wrong amount on their loans. Appearing before a British parliamentary committee the day after his resignation, Diamond called his company’s action “reprehensible” but said top executives had moved swiftly to take action.

Bob Diamond: “When I read the emails from those traders, I got physically ill. It’s reprehensible behavior, and if you’re asking me, should those actions be dealt with, absolutely. But I think it’s a sign of the culture of Barclays that we were willing to be first, we were willing to be fast, we were willing to come out with this.”

Diamond is the second top Barclays executive to depart after chairman Marcus Agius resigned last week. Also speaking at the British parliamentary hearing, Labour Member of Parliament George Mudie said Barclays executives had shown negligent behavior.

George Mudie: “That’s not the point, that tells the world with Barclays. That tells the world with Barclays that two chief executives have been running the firm, and it’s been doing fundamentally wrong things. And your senior management have known about it, and they’ve either been too frightened or too disinterested to actually tell the chief executive. And that is a very worrying thing to come out the inquiry.”

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top