Germany's
biggest bank is reportedly cooperating with European investigators probing the
manipulation of interbank interest rates. The bank seeks to limit the damage as
regulators have started imposing penalties.
Deutsche
Bank has asked the European Commission and Swiss authorities to give it the
status of cooperating witness in an ongoing investigation of the rigging of the
London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), media reports said on Sunday.
According
to the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, Germany's biggest bank had
already offered investigators a pact in 2011, in efforts to "limit damage
to its reputation and bottom line."
"Anxiety
currently reigns within Deutsche Bank," a source close to the bank told
the German weekly.
Deutsche
Bank is one of some 20 banks alleged to have manipulated Libor - the key
interest rate for daily interbank lending transactions, which include
mortgages, loans and credit cards.
Libor is
compiled daily by the British Bankers' Association from information provided by
major banks on how much they assume they need to pay for borrowing from each
other. The banks stand accused of having lied on their input for Libor between
2005 and 2011.
Crown
witnesses
Spiegel
said that the European Commission had already granted British bank Barclays as
well as Swiss bank UBS the status of cooperating witnesses.
In
addition, the news magazine reported that the EU executive body had decided to
grant total immunity to the first bank to cooperate and lighter penalties for a
maximum of two other banks coming clean on their involvement in the scandal.
Barclays,
the bank said to be at the center of the scandal, was fined a record 350
million euros ($450 million) last month by US and British authorities.
According
to a study by US investment bank Morgan Stanley, quoted by the DPA news agency
Monday, Deutsche Bank's exposure might amount to more than $1 billion, with the
banks under investigation facing a total of $22 billion in penalties.
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