How Rate Rigging Squeezed U.K. Farmers

Sussex, England: Gribble has 180 Holstein Friesian cows, the highest-yielding breed.
Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

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By Gavin Finch and Julia-Ambra Verlaine

January 15, 2015 at 8:51 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

This article is part of the January 19, 2015 issue of businessweek.

Last year six banks were fined a total of $4.3 billion by regulators in the U.S. and Europe for colluding to rig the price of currencies. Such market manipulation profits banks at the expense of pensioners, investors, companies—and farmers like Ed Gribble.

Gribble gets up at 5 a.m. to feed the 180 cows on his farm in Sussex on the south coast of England. He barely scrapes by: If it weren’t for the subsidy he gets from the European Union, he’d have to sell his Holstein Friesian cows.