Banks pull out of dozens of benchmarks after rate-rigging scandals

By Daniel Schafer
Financial Times, London
Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Some of the world's largest banks have stopped contributing to dozens of financial benchmarks to avoid further litigation risk in the wake of the Libor and foreign exchange rate rigging scandals.

Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, JPMorgan, and UBS, among others, have set up task forces to scrutinise submission processes for hundreds of benchmarks in everything from commodities to interbank lending as they seek to cut their litigation and regulatory risk, several people close to the situation said.

The withdrawals have already helped speed up revamps of the silver and gold fixes and reforms to some interbank lending benchmarks so that they are based on actual transactions rather than bank submissions.

But investors warned the crackdown could leave less liquid markets without any benchmark at all and make it impossible to determine whether they are getting fair prices on their derivatives and good returns on their investments. ...

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http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3bc3d088-494b-11e4-9d7e-00144feab7de.html