With Barclays former chief executive poised to answer questions over Barclays’ involvement in manipulating LIBOR rates later today, Tucker has made the unusual move to request to come before MPs.
In a statement, the Bank of England said: “Paul Tucker has made a request to attend a hearing with the Treasury Select Committee as soon as possible following the publication of settlement agreements by Barclays with the Financial Services Authority, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission and The United States Department of Justice in relation to the attempted manipulation of LIBOR and EURIBOR.
“Mr Tucker is keen to give evidence to the Committee in order to clarify the position with regard to the events involving the Bank of England, including the telephone conversation with Bob Diamond on 29 October 2008.”
The Bank put out the statement following a release yesterday from Barclays detailing a conversation between the deputy governor and Diamond.
A memo released by Barclays said Diamond had a conversation with Tucker during which the latter questioned why Barclays was towards the high end of LIBOR pricing.
Diamond took notes on the phone call in October 2008, which also said Whitehall had begun questioning the pricing.
It said: “Further to our last call, Tucker reiterated he had received calls from a number of senior figures within Whitehall to question why Barclays was always toward the top end of the LIBOR pricing.
“His response was ‘you have to pay what you have to pay.’ I asked if he could relay the reality, not all banks were providing quotes at the levels that represented real transactions, his response was: “Oh, that would be worse”.”
Diamond quit the bank this week after it was fined £290m by US and UK regulators for making false submissions relating to the interbank lending rate. Other banks are also involved but have yet to be punished by the FSA.
