1. Which groups were most at fault for the LIBOR manipulations: brokers, traders, bank executives, bank boards of directors, or regulators? Why?
2. Robert Diamond continues to receive his £2 million pension annually. Should he suffer financially by having to forfeit this pension because the LIBOR scandal occurred while he was CEO of Barclays?
3. Both Barclays and UBS reduced the bonuses of current employees to help pay part of the fines that occurred because of the actions of former employees. Is this fair?
4. The rate manipulations seemed to be systemic to the industry because so many banks were involved. What can be done to curtail such widespread unethical practices within an industry?
5. Why weren’t the directors of the banks that had caused the scandal fined or jailed? Should they have been?
6. Why should members of the public trust the banks that were involved in manipulating the LIBOR rate?

On any given day, a bank may have either a surplus or deficiency of cash. When this occurs, banks tend to lend to and borrow from other banks at a negotiated rate of interest. These interbank loans could be as short as one day and as long as several months. The interest rate charged on these interbank loans is estimated by various banks and averaged everyday by the British Banking Association (BBA) to create a benchmark  interest  rate  called  LIBOR  (the London Interbank Offering Rate). Eighteen of the world’s largest banks submit information about their borrowing costs. The BBA then determines the LIBOR rates based on those submissions. LIBOR in turn is used as a benchmark rate to price more than $800 trillion of securities and loans around the word, including swaps, derivatives, mortgages, as well as corporate and consumer loans. In September 2012 the United Kingdom’s Financial Securities Authority (FSA) announced that the BBA would no longer be administering LIBOR because of a scandal. This LIBOR scandal has had a significant impact on several banks.