TWO former senior employees of UOB Kay Hian Private Limited (UOBKH) were charged on Wednesday for allegedly lying to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in relation to reports on a then Catalist aspirant. Lan Kang Ming, 38, and Wee Toon Lee, 34, each face three charges of providing MAS with false information in October 2018 in relation to due diligence reports on an unidentified company applying to list on the Catalist board of the Singapore Exchange. MAS said in a media statement on Wednesday that it was performing an onsite inspection of UOBKH between June and August 2018, to assess the latter's controls, policies and procedures in relation to its role as an issue manager for Initial Public Offering (IPOs). During the examination, Lan and Wee were said to have provided different versions of a due diligence report relating to background checks on a company applying to be listed on the Catalist board of the Singapore Exchange. UOBKH had acted as the issu...
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Associated Press in London
05 July 2012
The former boss of Barclays said yesterday that the British bank illegally reported low borrowing rates in October 2008 because other banks were reporting even lower ones, making Barclays look bad and threatening efforts to attract investment from Qatar.
Banks borrow from each other daily and report the rates at which they do so. Those reports are compiled into a benchmark interest rate used to price the rates charged on loans worldwide. US and British authorities fined Barclays US$453 million last week for reporting lower than actual borrowing rates.
Bob Diamond, who resigned as chief executive officer on Tuesday, told a British parliamentary committee there was fear that the government would be alarmed by Barclays’ borrowing rates and would conclude the bank was in trouble.
He insisted Barclays had been reporting accurate rates through most of October.
Barclays was able to raise additional capital, and got through the credit crisis without a government bailout.
“We were desperate. We had £6.7 billion (HK$81.5 billion) in equity being raised, and if rumours got into the market that we couldn’t fund, maybe we couldn’t complete the equity raising,” Diamond told the Treasury Select Committee.
As well as Diamond, Barclays chairman Marcus Agius and chief operating officer Jerry del Missier also stepped down this week.
On October 29, 2008, Diamond had a conversation with Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the central Bank of England, in which Diamond raised concerns that other banks were reporting false lower rates.
A note recorded by Diamond, which has been submitted to the committee, said Tucker initiated the call as senior government officials were wondering why Barclays was reporting higher borrowing rates.
“I asked if he could relay the reality that not all banks were providing quotes at the levels that represented real transaction,” Diamond recorded. “His response [was] ‘Oh, that would be worse.”‘
Diamond’s note added that Tucker told him “that while he was certain we did not need advice, that it did not always need to be the case that we appeared as high as we have recently”.
Barclays insists that Diamond did not take this to be an order from Tucker. However, it says Del Missier mistakenly thought the central bank had ordered Barclays to report lower rates and passed the instruction on to staff.
The Bank of England said yesterday that Tucker was “quite keen” to testify to the committee to give his version of the conversation.
The central bank has denied knowing of any impropriety in setting the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.
Diamond told the committee that even after Del Missier’s instruction, Barclays was still reporting higher rates than most other banks and had no influence on the final Libor calculation, which excludes reports at the extreme high and lower ends.
Diamond told the committee that there were also concerns in October 2008 over how the government might react to the bank’s relatively higher rates. “They might say to themselves, ‘My goodness, they can’t fund. We need to nationalise them,’ as they had nationalised other British banks,” Diamond said.
Barclays has said it had no intention of manipulating Libor in 2008, though some of its traders - Diamond said there were 14 - had done so to protect positions they had taken out in the financial markets starting in 2005.