Meet ‘Trader A’: The Man at the Center of UBS Libor Probe
WSJ: “Trader A,” a former UBS UBSN.VX -3.46%trader, may have called others “Superman,” but from the way regulators describe his alleged efforts to manipulate Libor, it would seem he was the one with considerable power.
WSJ has reported that “Trader A” is Thomas Hayes, a 33-year-old Briton working in Tokyo, who the U.S. Department of Justice has charged with engaging in a criminal conspiracy to rig the rate. Hayes, who left UBS, has not been reached by WSJ for comment. WSJ first reported back in February that he had become a focal point for the global investigation.
In documents released Wednesday by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic, Hayes is painted as an ambitious trader of yen swaps who orchestrated various ways to manipulate the Libor rate tied to the Japanese yen.
The complaints show he mostly failed to be subtle in his requests, made in electronic chats, ignored grammar and punctuation and spoke in abbreviations common to the trading world.
According to the DOJ complaint, Hayes pushed traders at UBS to change the bank’s own Libor submissions, coordinated with traders at other banks to change those banks’ submissions and worked with brokerage firms to have them manipulate information that was used by banks that were determining what to submit.
“The scheme alleged is epic in scale, involving people who have walked the halls of some of the most powerful banks in the world, said Assistant U.S. Attorney General Lanny Breuer.
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UBS admits fraud in $1.5 billion Libor rigging settlement
Fox Business New: ZURICH – Swiss bank UBS was hit with a $1.5 billion bill and admitted to fraud on Wednesday in order to settle charges of manipulating global benchmark interest rates.
The penalty agreed with U.S., UK and Swiss regulators is more than three times the $450 million fine levied on Britain’s Barclays in June for rigging the Libor benchmark rate used to price financial contracts around the globe.
It is the second-largest fine paid by a bank and comes a week after Britain’s HSBC agreed to pay the biggest ever penalty – $1.92 billion – to settle a probe in the United States into laundering money for drug cartels.
"We deeply regret this inappropriate and unethical behavior. No amount of profit is more important than the reputation of this firm, and we are committed to doing business with integrity," UBS Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti said in a statement disclosing the extent of the wrongdoing, which took place over six years from 2005 to 2010.
UBS said it will pay $1.2 billion to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), 160 million pounds to the UK’s Financial Services Authority and 59 million Swiss francs from its estimated profit to Swiss regulator Finma.
The FSA said at least 45 people were involved in the rigging, which took place across a range of Libor currencies.
A similar admission by Barclays in June touched off a political firestorm that forced its chairman and chief executive to quit.
The Libor benchmarks are used for trillions of dollars worth of loans around the world, ranging from home loans to credit cards to complex derivatives.
Tiny shifts in the rate, compiled from daily polls of bankers, could benefit banks by millions of dollars. But every dollar a bank benefited meant an equal loss by a bank, hedge fund or other investor on the other side of the trade – raising the threat of a raft of civil lawsuits.
The steep fine for UBS is despite the bank, since 2011, cooperating with law-enforcement agencies in their probes. The bank said it received conditional immunity from some regulators.
UBS has had a tough 18 months after suffering a $2.3 billion loss in a rogue trading scandal, management upheaval and thousands of job cuts.
(Additional reporting by Martin De’Sapinto, Huw Jones; Sarah White; Steve Slater; Writing by Alexander Smith; Editing by Carmel Crimmins)
Aurora Colorado and Newtown Shooting Connected to Libor Scandal
Video: 2 Mass Shootings Connected To Libor Scandal
The father of Connecticut school shooter Adam Lanza, Peter Lanza, was the tax director for General Electric, a corporation that paid -0- taxes on 14.2 billion dollars in profits last year. According to Fabian4Liberty, Peter Lanza was scheduled to testify in the ongoing global LIBOR scandal. In what could only be described an amazing coincidence, the father of Colorado Batman shooter James Holmes, Robert Holmes, was also a LIBOR witness in his position with FICO. According to the link at FICO, Robert Holmes was a ‘Fraud Scientist’.
From Fabain4Liberty:
The father of Newtown Connecticut school shooter Adam Lanza is Peter Lanza who is a VP and Tax Director at GE Financial. The father of Aurora Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes is Robert Holmes, the lead scientist for the credit score company FICO. Both men were to testify before the US Senate in the ongoing LIBOR scandal. The London Interbank Offered Rate, known as Libor, is the average interest rate at which banks can borrow from each other. 16 international banks have been implicated in this ongoing scandal, accused of rigging contracts worth trillions of dollars. HSBC has already been fined $1.9 billion and three of their low level traders arrested.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a motive and a link. This coincidence is impossible to overlook. Two mass shootings connected to LIBOR.
askmarion 
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