The British banking lobby responsible for setting Libor said it was happy to hand over the task to regulators, days ahead of an expected U.K. proposal to take tighter control of the scandal-tainted benchmark borrowing rate, Reuters reported yesterday. Martin Wheatley, a top U.K. regulator, is expected to propose stripping the British Bankers’ Association of its supervisory role in setting the hugely influential London interbank offered rate, in plans to be presented Friday. Libor, which underpins global trade and is used as a reference for pricing loans and transactions worth more than $350 trillion, has been engulfed in controversy since Barclays was fined a record $471 million in June for fixing the rate.
