Lloyds Banking Group, bailed out by British taxpayers during the financial crisis, will pay £218 million (HK$2.86 billion) in fines to British and United States regulators after manipulating benchmark interest rates. The lender will pay US$105 million to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC), US$86 million to the Department of Justice and £105 million to Britain's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), according to a statement yesterday. Lloyds has also paid a further £7.8 million in compensation to the Bank of England after the actions of its traders reduced the fees the central bank received from one of its emergency-rescue packages. "The actions of these individuals between 2006 and 2009 are completely unacceptable," Lloyds chairman Norman Blackwell said. "Their behaviour involved a gross breach of trust and we condemn it without reservation." Prosecutors and regulators around the world are investigating firms to determine how traders at more than a dozen firms colluded to rig the London interbank offered rate and related benchmarks to profit on their own derivatives deals. At least nine financial firms have been fined about US$6 billion for manipulating Libor, the benchmark interest rate for more than US$300 trillion of securities worldwide. Lloyds's penalty is less than the £290 million Barclays paid in June 2012 when the London-based lender became the first to settle Libor-manipulation claims. UBS, Switzerland's biggest bank, has paid the most, settling with US, British and Swiss regulators in 2012 at the cost of US$1.5 billion. The lender paid redress to the Bank of England after four traders manipulated the BBA Sterling Repo Rate between April 2008 and 2009, according to Lloyds. Their actions reduced the fees banks would have to pay under the Special Liquidity Scheme, put in place to help British banks through the financial crisis, according to a BOE statement. "Such manipulation is highly reprehensible, clearly unlawful and may amount to criminal conduct on the part of the individuals involved," Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, said in a letter to Lloyds released yesterday. Twelve individuals, four of whom were managers, were either involved in or aware of requests to manipulate sterling, dollar and yen Libor, according to the FCA. They were motivated by the fact the money market desk's performance helped to determine their bonuses, according to the British regulator. "There was a culture on the money market desks of seeking to take a financial advantage wherever possible," the CFTC said. The bank is scheduled to report its first-half earnings on Thursday.