Rate-rigging scandal: Lloyds share price slides as it sacks eight people and holds back £3m of bonuses
Having paid out £226m to US and UK authorities for various cases of rate-rigging back in July, Lloyds Banking Group has now turned its attentions to its own staff, firing eight and holding back £3m of bonuses.
Shares in the bank fell 0.5 per cent in early afternoon trading after it said it "has taken disciplinary action" against workers who were involved in rate rigging – although it was unable to reprimand those who had already left the bank.
Lloyds settled with authorities in July, paying £218m in fines to regulators on both sides of the Atlantic for its involvement in Libor rigging. It paid a further £7.8m to the Bank of England for cutting the fees it paid to use its special liquidity service, created in 2008 to provide access to cheap money from the central bank.
Antonio Horta-Osorio, Lloyds' chief executive, said the bank was "committed to preventing this type of behaviour [from] happening again".
He said:
The changes we have implemented over the last three years as part of our successful customer-focused and UK-centric strategy have created a culture and values that focus totally on our retail and commercial customers. We are determined to make Lloyds Banking Group a company of the highest integrity and standards.