Lloyds Traders Suspended Amid Libor Probe Said to Return to Work

Two Lloyds Banking Group Plc (LLOY) traders who were suspended in a probe of potential manipulation of the London interbank offered rate returned to work this week, two people briefed on the matter said.

The people declined to be identified because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter. Foreign-exchange derivatives trader Alexandre Dube and interest-rate derivatives trader John Argent both declined to comment when contacted at their offices in London today.

The two were sent home in about March, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News in May. “We don’t comment on individual employees,” said Ian Kitts, a spokesman for Lloyds.

Lloyds, Britain’s biggest mortgage lender, is one of at least 12 firms that have fired or suspended traders following internal probes into suspected manipulation of Libor, a benchmark rate for about $350 trillion of contracts from mortgages to swaps. Regulators from Canada to Singapore and the U.K. are investigating whether traders colluded to try and rig the rate and lenders lied about their true cost of borrowing.

Libor is derived from a survey of banks conducted daily on behalf of the British Bankers’ Association in London. The lenders are asked how much it would cost them to borrow from one another for 15 different periods, from overnight to one year, in currencies including dollars, euros, yen and Swiss francs. After a predetermined number of quotes are excluded, those remaining are averaged and published for each currency by the BBA before noon.

Lloyds said in March it had been named in private lawsuits in the U.S. relating to how various banks set Libor, and was also cooperating with government agencies in their investigations.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ambereen Choudhury in London at achoudhury@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Edward Evans at eevans3@bloomberg.net