Regulators are focusing on at least four of Europe’s biggest banks as they investigate the attempted manipulation of the region’s benchmark interest rate, suspecting that Barclays traders were the ringleaders of a circle that included Crédit Agricole, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and Société Générale.
Evidence of links between traders at all four banks and Barclays’ former euroswaps trader Philippe Moryoussef is under scrutiny, people involved in the process have told the Financial Times.
The news comes in the wake of the clear-out of top management at Barclays, after the bank paid a £290m fine to settle probes in the US and UK into its involvement in the attempted manipulation of the London interbank offered rate (Libor) and its European equivalent, Euribor.