UK committee to question Barclays executive, regulator

Britain's top banking regulator and a former executive involved in an interest rate scandal at Barclays face grilling by British lawmakers over their knowledge of an affair that involved regulators and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic.

The House of Commons Treasury Select Committee will question Jerry del Missier two weeks after he quit as chief operating officer of Barclays, the British bank hit by an interest rate manipulation scandal that has kicked up a political storm. Missier was the trusted aide of Bob Diamond, the Barclays chief executive who quit the same day.

Del Missier, according to Barclays, had misinterpreted a message from Diamond and told the bank's staff that the Bank of England had granted sanction to their submitting lower rates to massage down the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, the rate that underpins global transaction worth trillions of dollars.

Del Missier, has offered no public comments on the matter and, according to analysts, his evidence could be crucial in nailing down who really was in the know of how much at Braclays, in the wake of Diamond's testimony which some committee members say was misleading, a charge rejected by Diamond.

Adair Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), would be next after Del Missier before the committee and would face questions as to the regulator's involvement and whether it was tough enough when rate rigging occurred between 2005 and 2009.

Barclays, which was fined a record $450 million last month by US and British authorities for manipulation of the Libor interest rate, would pull out of the rate-setting panel for interbank lending in the United Arab Emirates because of its involvement in the Libor scandal in Britain, Reuters quoted unidentified industry sources as saying yesterday.