BackAnshu Jain said to be cleared in German probe of Libor rigging
German banking and markets regulator found no evidence that any management board member knew about rigging of interest rates, 'Handelsblatt' said
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Seattle: German investigators exonerated Deutsche Bank AG co-chief executive officer Anshu Jain of involvement in manipulating interest rates after a two-year probe, newspaper Handelsblatt reported.
The nation’s banking and markets regulator, known as Bafin, found no evidence that any management board member knew about or participated in rigging interest rates, Handelsblatt said. The Bonn-based watchdog’s report on the case is expected to come at the start of 2015, the newspaper said, citing unidentified people in the financial industry.
Jain, who won the co-CEO job after leading the firm’s investment bank to record profit, hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing as Deutsche Bank contends with international probes into whether firms rigged the London interbank offered rate. He helped lead the investment bank from 2004 to 2012, years when some alleged improprieties occurred.
Michael Golden, a spokesman for the Frankfurt-based company, declined to comment on the Handelsblatt report. He referred to the bank’s prior statements that it’s cooperating with authorities, has conducted its own review and that investigations have found “no current or former member of the management board had any inappropriate involvement."
Spokesmen for Bafin didn’t immediately respond to messages outside normal business hours.
Regulators and prosecutors around the world are investigating allegations that traders and bankers colluded to submit interest-rate data to move benchmarks for profit. A dozen firms so far have been fined at least $6.5 billion in probes related to Libor and its derivatives. More than $300 trillion of securities, loans and contracts are tied to Libor.
Deutsche Bank was among six firms fined in December by the European Commission for rigging Euribor, the benchmark money-market rate for the euro, and yen Libor, which reflects how much banks charge each other for loans in the Japanese currency. The bank, which paid 725 million euros ($891 million) to settle that case, said in October that it’s in talks with authorities to resolve its role in the industrywide rigging of benchmark interest rates. Bloomberg
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