RBS bans staff from using online chat rooms

Chat rooms have been a focus for regulators investigating manipulation of the Libor and Euribor benchmark interest rates and possible rigging in the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market.

Confirming a Bloomberg report, RBS said it had told front office staff in its markets division that all permanent chat rooms with workers at other banks, bank entities or competitors had been prohibited, as well as those with clients, brokers and securities firms, unless certain criteria were met.

RBS has also told staff that all social chat rooms are prohibited and must be closed immediately. It said the primary purpose of chats should be business related and adhere to the group’s competition law guidance.

Sources said this week that JPMorgan Chase, the biggest US bank by assets, was planning to ban the use of multi-dealer online chat rooms and the use of such rooms among staff for social purposes.

Deutsche Bank had prohibited its foreign exchange and fixed income staff from using online chat rooms, and UBS banned the use of multi-bank and social chat rooms at its investment banking division. Citigroup and Barclays had also clamped down.

Traders at banks and financial institutions often communicate with each other online via third-party services including Bloomberg LP and Thomson Reuters.

Meanwhile, the new bank being spun out from Royal Bank of Scotland will shorten its name to Williams & Glyn as it steps up plans from January for its independent future.

RBS is reviving an old banking name for the business it has been forced to sell by European authorities as a cost of being bailed out by UK taxpayers in 2008.

The business, which includes 314 branches and is due to formally split from RBS in 2015, has up to now been called ‘Williams & Glyn’s’, but will now drop the ’s.

“From January, we’ll be consistent in referring to Williams & Glyn, which is more simple and straightforward and also acknowledges the bank’s rich heritage,” a spokesman for RBS said.

The Williams & Glyn network will include 308 branches that are currently branded RBS in England and Wales and six that are now NatWest branches in Scotland, and accounts for one in seven of the group’s 2,200 UK branches.