The Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC are being investigated by the Swiss authorities over allegations they manipulated the interbank lending rates which may have distorted the price of trillions of dollars of securities.
The Swiss Competition Commission (COMCO) said it was looking into 12 banks, including RBS, HSBC, Citigroup and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, after receiving information that derivative traders may have colluded to set the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate (TIBOR).
Regulators from America, the European Union and the UK are already investigating whether banks worked together to keep interbank lending rates down to reduce borrowing costs and cap investor panic during the financial crisis.
"Derivative traders working for a number of financial institutions might have manipulated these submissions by co-ordinating their behaviour, thereby influencing these reference rates in their favour," COMCO said in a statement.
A COMCO official told reporters that the regulator was "focusing on the problems that appeared in the Swiss market". But he added they were in touch with the US Department of Justice and the EU's Competition Commission.
The other banks involved in the inquiry include Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Mizuho Financial Group, Rabobank, Societe Generale, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and UBS.
Libor is the rate banks say they charge each other to borrow money. Set daily by the British Bankers' Association, it is used as a benchmark to set interest rates on about $350 trillion (£222 trillion) worth of financial products.
Some central banks, including Switzerland's, use the rate to set monetary policies.
In July last year, UBS said it had been granted leniency or immunity by some authorities in return for cooperating in their Libor manipulation investigations.
Source: RBS and HSBC among banks probed by Swiss over Libor allegations - Telegraph
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