The Financial Conduct Authority has imposed a financial penalty of £250,000 on Neil Danziger, a former Royal Bank of Scotland interest rate derivatives trader, and has prohibited him from performing any function in relation to any regulated financial activity.

Danziger used to work at RBS, trading products that were 'referenced' to Japanese Yen (JPY) LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate). In addition, on occasion, he made RBS’s JPY LIBOR submissions to the British Bankers Association (BBA) when RBS’s primary submitters were not available.

The FCA says that Danziger was knowingly concerned in RBS’s failure to observe proper standards of market conduct (in which the bank went against 'principle for business' 5) and has determined that he is not 'fit and proper' to indulge in investment business because he acted recklessly and lacked integrity.

Between 2007 and 2010, he is said to have routinely made requests to RBS’s primary submitters, intending to benefit the trading positions for which he and other derivatives traders were responsible; taking those trading positions into account when acting as a substitute submitter; and, on two occasions, obtaining a broker’s assistance to attempt to manipulate the JPY LIBOR submissions of other banks. In addition, he initiated 28 so-called wash trades (risk-free trades) for which there was no legitimate commercial rationale. The FCA says that this was in return for "his receipt of personal hospitality."

A more famous rogue trader, Kweku Adoboli, whose unauthorised trading cost his employer UBS US$2 billion (£1.3 billion) and led to a prison sentence of seven years of which he only served half, has recently appealed successfully against deportation from the UK to his native Ghana.

The FCA wants to 'retire' LIBOR by the end of 2021, although this might be subject to all manner of delays. It announced its plan in July last year. Some commentators believe that daily LIBOR rates will be published for years after the FCA abandons the standard, although after a vast drop in use.