| Whether it’s Libor or gold, the story is the same, with Barclays once again at the centre of controversy. On June 28, 2012, the day after Barclays was fined £290 million by Britain’s market regulator for manipulating the benchmark lending rate, Libor, a Barclays customer raised concerns with the bank about the afternoon gold fix. This was set during one of the twice daily telephone gold auctions held by five London-based investment banks — Barclays included, which also acts as a benchmark for gold prices.
The ‘fix’ was declared at $1,558.50, and under an options contract the bank had entered into with the customer, the bank would not have to pay that customer the $3.9 million it would have owed him had the fix been above $1,588.96, boosting its own trading book by $1.75 million...............................................Full Article: Source
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