The
banks are targeting so-called multilateral chat rooms, in which many dealers
participate at the same time. Bilateral communications between individual
traders and their counterparts at other banks, and between traders and their
clients, are not under review, the sources said.
Regulators
and investors are concerned about the integrity of financial benchmarks after
investigations into the rigging of a key interest rate known as the London interbank offered
rate, or Libor, which has already cost banks billions of dollars in
settlements.
A global probe into alleged currency manipulation is focusing on chat rooms with names such as "The Cartel," in which traders from many of the big banks are alleged to have colluded to manipulate foreign exchange (FX) rates, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier.
Chat
communications featured prominently in a five-year probe into Libor. The probe
into alleged FX rigging only surfaced in June but has snowballed in recent
weeks, with regulators from the United States,
Switzerland and Britain
confirming they are investigating.
"Every
bank is looking at this issue, you'd be crazy not to be," said one source.
He
said removing access to chat rooms, where traders from a number of banks
communicate with each other online via third- party services including
Bloomberg LP and Thomson Reuters , has been under consideration for months,
pre-dating the currency allegations which center on the so-called London fixings and which
first surfaced in June but snowballed in October.
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