The stock of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc fell 6 percent, the most in four months, as U.S. authorities push for criminal charges in the probe into allegations that Britain’s biggest publicly owned lender tried to rig interest rates, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The U.S. Justice Department has extended talks to press the Edinburgh-based bank for a guilty plea in any settlement. RBS may pay about 500 million pounds ($786 million) to U.S. and U.K. authorities to settle the claims as soon as next week. The fine would be the second-largest levied by regulators in their investigation into allegations that traders at the world’s biggest lenders manipulated submissions used to set the London interbank offered rate. UBS AG, Switzerland’s biggest lender, paid a $1.5 billion fine in December and its Japanese unit pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in the U.S. in its December settlement.
