The European Commission imposed yesterday a historic 1.71 billion fine six major banks for manipulating euribor, libor and tibor interest rates between banks. Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Société Générale, Royal Bank of Scotland and the broker RP Martin were implicated.
The banks have not practiced the kind of transparency that they preach while demanding Southern European banks to comply with stiff standards. They shared information among themselves and created a scheme that profited off three banking indices that are a popular point of reference for many loans.
Ultimately, the fine will damage the banks' reputations more than their balance sheets.
