UBS fined $1.5bn for Libor rigging

UBS is the second major bank to be fined for manipulating the Libor interest rate

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• Explaining the Libor scandal
• Timeline: Libor-fixing scandal
• Global banking scandals explained
• How British banking broke down

Swiss banking giant UBS has agreed to pay $1.5bn (£940m) to US, UK and Swiss regulators for attempting to manipulate the Libor inter-bank lending rate.

It becomes the second major bank to be fined over Libor after Barclays was ordered to pay $450m to UK and US authorities in the summer.

Regulators worldwide are investigating a number of banks for rigging Libor.

Libor tracks the average rate at which the major international banks based in London lend money to each other.

The bank also admitted to manipulating Euribor and Tibor - the equivalent interest rates set by lenders in the eurozone and in Tokyo.

UBS said it had agreed to pay fines to regulators in three different countries:

• $1.2bn (£740m) in combined fines to the US Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission
• £160m to the UK's Financial Services Authority (FSA)
• 59m Swiss francs (£40m) to the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority

It is the second-largest set of fines imposed on a bank to date, after the $1.9bn that HSBC agreed to pay US authorities earlier this month to settle allegations of money-laundering.