UBS Will Pay $1.5B in Libor Scandal

Swiss banking giant UBS will indeed pay a hefty $1.5 billion in fines in the wake of the Libor rate-rigging scandal—a much larger fine than Barclays had to dole out for its role, and the second largest penalty American and British regulators have ever imposed on a financial institution, the New York Times reports. Investigators also squeezed a guilty plea out of UBS' Tokyo branch to one count of wire fraud, in the first criminal charge a banking subsidiary has copped to in more than a decade.

“The findings we have set out in our notice today do not make for pretty reading,” says a British enforcement director, who slammed "UBS traders and managers” for ignoring "the fundamental importance" of the "integrity of the benchmarks." For its part, UBS' chief executive says he and his colleagues "deeply regret this inappropriate and unethical behavior," reports the BBC. (More UBS stories.)