LON­DON-Two British me­dia out­lets are re­port­ing that the chair­man of UK-based Bar­clays bank plans to re­sign this week fol­low­ing the scan­dal re­gard­ing the ma­nip­u­la­tion of da­ta by his bank. The Guardian news­pa­per and the BBC re­port­ed yes­ter­day that Mar­cus Ag­ius will step down af­ter hav­ing served as Bar­clays' chair­man for about six years.

US and British agen­cies im­posed fines to­tal­ing $453 mil­lion on Bar­clays last week for sub­mit­ting false da­ta used in set­ting the Lon­don in­ter­bank of­fer rate, LI­BOR, a key mar­ket in­dex, be­tween 2005 and 2009. The bank sub­mit­ted that da­ta to make its fi­nan­cial po­si­tion ap­pear stronger. The Guardian and BBC did not ex­plain whether Ag­ius was linked to the scan­dal.

The UK Guardian re­port­ed that Ag­ius was ex­pect­ed to stay on while a full-time suc­ces­sor is found as the Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Au­thor­i­ty, the City's reg­u­la­tor, would need to ap­prove the po­si­tion. The news­pa­per said that ex­ist­ing board mem­ber and for­mer Cad­bury boss Sir John Sun­der­land would lead the search for a full-time suc­ces­sor. Sir Michael Rake, a for­mer top ac­coun­tant and se­nior in­de­pen­dent di­rec­tor on the bank's board, is re­gard­ed as the front-run­ner but he has nu­mer­ous oth­er com­mit­ments which could pre­vent him tak­ing on the role, even tem­porar­i­ly.

The board­room reshuf­fle comes as Bar­clays gears up for Di­a­mond's ap­pear­ance be­fore MPs on the Trea­sury se­lect com­mit­tee on Wednes­day. The Amer­i­can-born chief ex­ec­u­tive is ex­pect­ed to face tough ques­tions about what changes have been made at the bank since it was land­ed with a record £290m fine last week.

"The fine, and the em­bar­rass­ing emails dis­clos­ing the way that traders at­tempt­ed to ma­nip­u­late the in­ter­est rates with of­fers of bot­tles of Bollinger cham­pagne, un­leashed a wave of po­lit­i­cal fury -which will in­ten­si­fy when MPs hold their hear­ings on Wednes­day and Thurs­day," ac­cord­ing to the UK Guardian.

The news­pa­per said that while Di­a­mond is ex­pect­ed to make clear to MPs that Bar­clays was not alone in the prac­tices-which dat­ed back as far as 2005-the de­ci­sion by the bank to set­tle with the reg­u­la­tors in the City and in the US has put it in the spot­light. He is like­ly to be ques­tioned about con­ver­sa­tions he had with the Bank of Eng­land at the time. Un­til this week­end, Bar­clays' board had felt that it had tak­en tough ac­tion in the wake of the fine. Di­a­mond for­feit­ed his bonus for 2012, as have his close col­leagues Jer­ry del Missier and Rich Ric­ci as well as the fi­nance di­rec­tor, Chris Lu­cas.

Share­hold­ers, though, want to claw back bonus­es from pri­or years and are con­cerned about the im­pact of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ven­tion, which has al­ready con­tributed to a £4b slump in the com­pa­ny's val­ue in just 72 hours, ac­cord­ing to the news­pa­per.

Bar­clays de­clined to com­ment.