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LIBOR RIGGING: The Slog reveals
why the enquiry must be judicial -
by John Ward
|
DOMINANT LIBOR DEALERS TOO CLOSE TO
DOWNING STREET
TULLET PREBON'S URGENT NEED FOR
LIBOR SCANDAL TO DISAPPEAR
Libor
rate fixing leaves PM in a fix
'A Molotov Cocktail Party' of conflicted
interests
As David
Cameron might say, let's be clear about this: Tory Party supporting
inter-dealer brokers like Tullet Prebon and ICAP provide liquidity and
anonymity to buyers and sellers. These clients are frequently banks of one
form or another. Michael Fallon insists that Tullet's "helped to nail the
banks" - but given the confidentiality of the firm's role and the BBA CEO
on board as a Senior Non-Exec, this is quickly revealed to be nonsense: for
them to have done this would've required both a betrayal of client trust, and
massive business losses.
In fact,
even the suspicion that they might have turned Queen's Evidence with
the FSA has helped lead to a fall-off in business at both ICAP and Tullet's. At
the latter, 'Banks that use the services of brokers like Tullett's are
scared so they're doing less business' wrote The Times last September; and they
weren't wrong. Tullet Prebon income dropped 3% in both November and December of
last year, and the firm's year was flat at £910m of income. In January of this
year, Tullet's cut 80 jobs, and then a further 80 in March.
In
short, the continuing mistrust, suspicions and controversy surrounding the
Libor rate are ruining Tullet's business. The firm therefore has an enormous
conflict of interest via Michael Fallon's membership of the Treasury Select
Committee - and a life-or-death desire to see the scandal go away.
Taken
together and with new information added by The Slog's research, the Libor Party
is revealed as being a seamless relationship between the Conservatives and the
Libor broking sector - or as one senior investment bank staffer put it
yesterday afternoon, "The Libor Party is amusing as a monniker at one
level, but the inbred nature of it means it is really a highly inflammable
Molotov Cocktail Party about the blow up in the Tory Party's face".
Read on
now and see why this source's view is easily vindicated.
Key
players in the Libor Party:
Angela
Knight, Michael Fallon, Terry Smith, Michael Spencer.
What they all have in common:
They all support or work for the
Conservative Party
They've all been involved in the Libor
sector for years
They all have obvious conflicts of
interest
The five
organisations involved in this cosy crony-club are the British Bankers'
Association (BBA), ICAP, Tullet Prebon, The Treasury Select Committee (TSC),
and the Conservative Party.
Michael
Fallon is Deputy Chairman of the Tory Party, a senior member of the TSC, and a
senior Board member at Tullet Prebon - a company described to me last night by
a City insider as "dominating the Libor sector". At least three of
the major institutions reporting on Libor rates are known to be Tullet clients.
Fallon may thus have been questioning one of his clients when he interrogated
Bob Diamond of Barclays last Wednesday.
Angela
Knight was
until recently the CEO of the BBA, an organisation on behalf of which she gave
misleading Libor evidence on at least one occasion. She is a non-Exec director
of Tullet Prebon, and she used
to be a Conservative MP.
Michael
Spencer
is the founder and CEO of ICAP, the largest Libor-sector money brokerage in
Europe, he used to be the
Tory Party's Treasurer, and he (and his company) last year donated £1.3m to the
Conservative Party. In
2010, Spencer was censured by the City for selling £45m of ICAP shares three
weeks before issuing a profit warning.
Terry
Smith is the
CEO of Tullet Prebon. Derek Tullett, founder of inter-dealer broker Tullett
Prebon, was listed as 'a major contributor' to
Tory Party election funding
during 2010. On his Board
he has collected both Fallon and Knight, and although Fallon says Tullet's
"helped to nail the banks" that must in turn have put Angela Knight
into an awkward position, she being the UK's greatest defender of both the
Banks and Libor. Smith spent the first five years of his life working on the
investment side at Barclays, and is an Associate at the Chartered Institute of
Bankers.
Is Britain
still a country where the chosen few look after each other and ignore the law?
If the conflicts outlined above do not lead to a judicial enquiry at least,
then the answer must be a resounding "Yes".
John Ward | July 6, 2012 at
8:13 am | Tags: 160 Tullet jobs shed already this
year, Libor a Molotov Cocktail Party for
Tories, Libor scandal ridiculous conflicts
of interest, Media must now push for full
judicial enquiry, no MPs, Tullet Prebon ICAP TSC Michael
Fallon David Cameron, Tullet's business revealed to be in
trouble as banks have lost trust in them | Categories: EXCLUSIVE: WHY MICHAEL FALLON NEEDS TO LIBOR SCANDAL TO
DISAPPEAR
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