You're listening to the inquiry with me Helena Merriman.

On the 26th of October 2006 a trader sent an email to a contact at Barclays Bank.

Dude, he wrote, I owe you big time.

Come over one day after work and I'm opening a bottle of Bollinger.

Why such generosity? Because the Barclays trader had just agreed to rig the interest rate

banks used to lend money to each other, called

libel.

Ten years later, on Monday this week, it was announced that three former Barclays employees have been convicted for

their part in the libel rigging scandal. But the fraud took place on a much greater

scale than that. So far six global banks have been fined billions for their

part in it. And of course that's not the only scandal to have engulfed banks in

recent years. Today our federal state working group is announcing a new $5 billion settlement with Goldman Sachs to resolve claims over the banks' deceptive practices leading up to the housing crash.

That's Eric Schneiderman, the Attorney General of New York in April this year.

Goldman Sachs, the giant Wall Street Investment Bank, had just agreed to pay billions for selling bundles of shoddy mortgages to investors.

Collectively, banks have now paid hundreds of billions of dollars in fines since 2008 for misleading investors,

manipulating interest rates and selling dodgy mortgages.

But critics say it will take more than that to stave off the next financial crisis.

To do that, they say, you need to change one thing.

A definitive change in banking culture calls for a root and branch inquiry into not just Barclays, but banking culture in London.

Towards a new culture of responsibility in British banking.

Don't ask, don't tell kind of banking culture.

But can you really change something as amorphous and intangible as banking culture?

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