UBS close to settlement over Libor charges: New York Times

Swiss bank UBS AG is close to a settlement with US and British authorities and is expected to pay over $450 million against claims that some of its employees submitted false Libor rates, according to the New York Times.

The newspaper said, a UBS spokeswoman told Reuters that the bank was in the midst of discussions with authorities in the US and Britain in connection with Libor investigations and had been fully cooperating with the regulatory and enforcement authorities, but did not offer further details.

 UBS spokeswoman Karina Byrne said as the lender was in discussion with the authorities, it could not comment further.

According to Reuters,  which cited unnamed officials briefed on the matter, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the US Justice Department and Britain's Financial Services Authority declined to comment.

The UBS case is expected to bring to light systemic problems in the rate-setting process, which affected how consumers and companies borrowed money around the world. Following reviews of thousands of internal bank e-mails and interviewing dozens of employees, the authorities have bared patterns of abuse at the major banks that helped set benchmark interest rates.

The massive investigation is focused on benchmarks like the Libor which is a measure of how much banks charge each other for loans. The mark is used to determine the costs of trillions of dollars of mortgages, credit card charges and student loans.