Libor Lowballing
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2017
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A secret recording that implicates the Bank of England in Libor rigging has been uncovered by the BBC . The 2008 recording adds to evidence the central bank repeatedly pressured commercial banks during the financial crisis to push their Libor rates down. Libor is the rate at which banks lend to each other, setting a benchmark for mortgages and loans for ordinary customers. The Bank of England said Libor was not regulated in the UK at the time. Ed Butler hears more from the BBC's economics correspondent, Andy Verity.
Also in the programme, we hear from our Business editor, Simon Jack, about evidence the BBC has seen that top executives at the oil company, Shell, knew money paid to the Nigerian government for a vast oil field would be passed to a convicted money-launderer. The deal was concluded while Shell was operating under a probation order for a separate corruption case in Nigeria. Shell said it did not believe its employees acted illegally.
And finally, our regular commentator Lucy Kellaway disapproves of the advice given publicly by one US corporate boss to her growing children.
(Picture: The Bank of England in central London, England. Credit: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:09.0 | Coming up, the recorded phone call that appears to suggest that the UK's central bank knew about |
| 0:15.1 | was involved in the manipulation of key lending rates. |
| 0:19.7 | This tape suggests the Bank of England knew about it |
| 0:22.9 | and indeed were encouraging or even instructing it. |
| 0:26.3 | So we need an immediate inquiry to find out exactly what is going on. |
| 0:31.2 | Also in the programme, Lucy Kellerway rails |
| 0:33.8 | against business executives advice to her teenage children. |
| 0:38.7 | If they've been told by their mothers never to do anything that doesn't feel natural |
| 0:43.1 | or align with their God-given gifts, how can they be anything other than insufferable brats |
| 0:49.3 | when they join the workforce? |
| 0:51.2 | All there to come in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:57.4 | The BBC has made an extraordinary discovery today. It has uncovered a secret recording that |
| 1:04.5 | implicates the Bank of England in rigging LIBOR interrates. That's the rate at which banks lend money to each other. |
| 1:13.1 | You'll remember that since the global financial crisis, a number of international banks have |
| 1:17.4 | received huge fines, more than $9 billion in total from prosecutors on both sides of the Atlantic. |
| 1:24.5 | But could a central bank also have been involved in this conspiracy? |
| 1:29.6 | It really is quite a story. Andy Verity, our economics correspondent, is the reporter behind it. |
| 1:35.1 | Andy, there was this big fuss, wasn't there, about five years ago. Remind us what LIBOR is exactly |
| 1:42.0 | and what the rigging means. |
| 1:47.3 | LIBOR, you can say it's the interest rate that really matters. |
| 1:53.1 | It's been called the world's most important number because it tracks the cost of borrowing money. |
... |
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