By Kirstin Ridley and Jamie McGeever
LONDON, Nov 12 (Reuters) - Chat room records published byregulators who imposed massive fines on banks for trying to rigforeign exchange rates reveal a macho culture among traders whoused banter laced with obscenities in a ruthless pursuit of"free money".
Foreign exchange traders at some of the world's biggestbanks encouraged each other to join together in order to "teamwhack" currency rates in a joint effort to manipulate the vastforeign exchange market for profit.
"Don't want other numpty's in mkt to know (about informationexchanged with the group), but not only that is he gonna protectus like we protect each other," one foreign exchange tradercommented to fellow dealers at other banks.
In anonymised transcripts published alongside record $3.4billion regulatory fines on five banks on Wednesday, traders showed a brazen disregard for integrity that has destroyed trustin financial markets, regulators said.
Trading around the daily currency benchmarks known as"fixes", can be highly profitable for banks. They can takeadvantage of differences between rates leading up to the fix andthe fix rate itself, which is the rate their clients get fororders thay have placed to buy or sell currencies.
In message groups with names such as "The Players" and "Thethree musketeers", traders teamed up to buy or sell currencies,often sharing confidential information about their orders.
One successful trade allowed traders at HSBC tomake a quick profit of $162,000 selling sterling for dollars,while traders at UBS collected $513,000 after sellingeuros for dollars.
Congratulations flowed fast and furious, according to thedocuments released by Britain's Financial Conduct Authority, themain financial markets regulator.
"there you go ... go early, move it, hold it, push it," saidone trader. "nice work gents ... I don my hat" and "don't messwith our ccy (currency)," said others. "we fooking killed itright" and "hes sat back in his chaoir (sic) ... feet on desk... announcing to desk ... that's why I got the bonus pool".
Regulators said traders were putting their own interestsahead of their customers while abusing the trust of the publicin a largely unregulated market in which more than $5 trillionchanges hands each day.
Or, as one trader put it: "How can I make free money with nofcking heads up?" (Editing by Giles Elgood)