Barclays in Libor settlement with U.S., UK regulators

WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) - British bank Barclays will pay at least $450 million to U.S. and British authorities to settle a probe into manipulation of the key interbank lending rate known as Libor.

Regulators have been investigating allegations that several banks, including BARCLAYS (BARC.LO) sought to manipulate the London Interbank Lending Rate (Libor), which underpins trillions of dollars of derivatives contracts worldwide and is also widely used as a reference rate for corporate lending.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Barclays attempted to manipulated Libor submissions "sometimes on a daily basis" over a four-year period starting in 2005. The CFTC ordered the bank to pay a $200 million penalty, saying it was the largest civil monetary penalty it has ever imposed.

Barclays also settled with the U.S. Department of Justice and the UK's Financial Services Authority and will pay fines of $160 million and $92.8 million, respectively.

In March the bank said it was engaged in a possible resolution with regulators looking into potential enforcement proceedings.

As well as the FSA and CFTC, other authorities probing Libor manipulation include the European Commission and Japan's Financial Services Authority.

Other banks involved include Citigroup, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS.

Several banks have suspended traders over the investigations. No criminal charges have yet been filed.

Libor is the benchmark for about $360 trillion worth of financial contracts worldwide. A daily poll asks banks at what rate they think they will be able to borrow money from each other in 10 major currencies and for 15 borrowing periods, ranging from overnight loans to 12 months.

Thomson Reuters is the British Bankers' Association's official agent for the daily calculation and publishing of the Libor rates. A spokesman for the company was not immediately available to comment.

As the credit crisis took hold in 2008, allegations started mounting that Libor no longer reflected reality, and authorities undertook to examine whether traders tried to influence whether the rate went up or down to profit on bets on the direction it would go. (Reporting by Steve Slater, Kirstin Ridley, Sarah White, Carrick Mollenkamp, Alexandra Alper and Karey Wutkowski; Writing by Kirstin Ridley in London and Ben Berkowitz in New York; Editing by Matthew Tostevin and John Wallace)