FINANCIAL TIMES: …Revelations that Barclays had suspended six staff, including its chief currencies trader in London, capped a torrid week for some of the world’s largest banks with signs that a wave of new regulatory probes across three continents poses a growing threat to earnings.
With more and more banks becoming ensnared and senior figures being put on leave, bankers and investors said the affair increasingly resembled the Libor rigging scandal. The Libor probe has so far led to the dismissal of many dozens of traders, while four banks and one interdealer broker have paid a total of $3.5bn in fines.
Authorities including those in Switzerland, the UK, Hong Kong and the US have opened preliminary investigations into whether some of the biggest banks in the world rigged the foreign exchange market, which has daily volumes of $5.3tn and is used by millions of companies, institutional funds and retail investors… (more)
