Sexist Bankers

The rate rigging scam over Libor was all about money - but the affair also portrayed the banking industry in a terrible light - with its 'traders' behaving like sexist pigs.

What's become clear in recent days is that a 'boys' network inside the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) - was completely out of control and allowed to run amok - which ended up costing the bank a huge fine of £390 million. 

One of these young men - Neil Danziger - boasted about his ability to manipulate the Libor interest rate which he said - "was going up and down like a whore's drawers".

Now I'm not a particularly straight laced person - I like a bit of fun and banter with the best of them - but to me this kind of language in a workplace is vile and unacceptable - and the only surprise is that they got away with it for so long.

The Financial Services Authority and the US financial watchdog, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission - released dozens of instant messages between traders as part of their report into the Libor rigging affair.  

The messages contained sexist banter between bankers - and demonstrated the casual ease with which they broke the law - unsupervised by their highly paid managers, of course.

RBS has since sacked Neil Danziger - but I do wonder what kind of salary this idiot was paid by the bank - probably a fortune by most people's standards which was no doubt topped up with a generous bonus. 

I hope Mr Danziger is now persona non grata right across the banking industry as a whole - better still that he is also prosecuted by the relevant authorities for his role in the Libor affair.

Now if those two things were two happen I might just start to believe that UK banks had turned a corner, but for the moment - I'm not holding my breath.