Barclays traders routinely co-ordinated with counterparts from at least four other banks in an attempt to move interest rate benchmarks, according to documents released on Wednesday by US and British market watchdogs.
Bloomberg, SCMP, June 29
In the 1980s I put in a stint with Morgan Stanley for several years and I recall being in the Tokyo dealing room one quiet morning when the chief trader in Japanese equities was feeling a little uncertain about the market's direction.
Suddenly he stood up at his desk on the traders' dais in the dealing room and bellowed out to his sales traders that he was a buyer of Honda Motor or Fujitsu or whatever it was.
Instantly the traders got on their phones and the client offers of stock began to flow in. This continued for a few minutes and then the chief trader stood up at his desk again and announced that he was a seller of the same stock.
Back to the phones went the traders looking for bids until the chief trader called a halt to the exercise. He had discovered what he wanted to know. The speed and size of the offers that he lifted relative to the speed and size of the bids that he hit for the same stock told him which way the market was moving.