LONDON, March 5 (Reuters) - Britain's financial watchdogsaid it should have performed better in how it responded tobanks rigging Libor benchmark interest rates but saw no majorregulatory failure.
The FSA published an internal report on Tuesday into when itfirst knew about manipulation of the London Interbank OfferedRate (Libor), used to price trillions of dollars of productsfrom credit cards to home loans.
FSA Chairman Adair Turner said as the watchdog had no directoversight of Libor, it "did not respond rapidly to clues thatlowballing might be occuring".
"The report also reveals that while some information wasavailable relating to lowballing, there is, for the periodcovered, no evidence of any information, direct or indirect,available to the FSA which indicated that traders weremanipulating LIBOR for profit," Turner said.
Barclays (BARC)