RBS ready to settle on Libor charges

Royal Bank of Scotland is prepared to settle complaints that bank traders manipulated the Libor lending benchmark, the bank's chief executive officer said. "We are up for settling with each and every one of them when they're ready. (But) we have to dance to the tune of the relevant regulator," CEO Stephen Hester said. The Daily Telegraph reported Saturday the taxpayer bailed-out bank, which reported losses of $2.2 billion in the third quarter, has set aside $2.7 billion for compensating customers as settlements for several complaints, including fraudulent sales of complicated interest hedges. The bank could expect to shell out more than the $460 million paid by Barclays in June to settle charges about its involvement in the growing Libor scandal. The $2.7 billion does not include funds set aside to cover the bank's Libor manipulations, the newspaper said. Authorities are investigating several major banks in the United States and Britain regarding manipulation or fixing of the London inter-bank offered rate, called the Libor, which is an average of interest rates banks charge each other for loans and is used to set borrowing rates on trillions of dollars worth of business and consumer lending. The bulk of the bank's third-quarter losses included a $2.4 billion correction on the value of its own debt and $641 million set aside for the derivatives scandal, The Daily Telegraph reported.