LON­DON- More glob­al banks are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for the al­leged fi­nan­cial mar­ket ma­nip­u­la­tion that led to fines of US$453 mil­lion against Bar­clays Bank, British Trea­sury chief George Os­borne said yes­ter­day, dri­ving fi­nan­cial stocks low­er. The day be­fore, US and British reg­u­la­tors fined Bar­clays for ma­nip­u­lat­ing the in­ter­est rate-the Lon­don in­ter­bank of­fered rate (Li­bor)-to its ad­van­tage be­tween 2005 and 2009. The rate is used to price mort­gages and con­sumer loans. Os­borne said Bar­clays was not the on­ly bank to be in­volved in mar­ket fix­ing. There are in­ves­ti­ga­tions in sev­er­al coun­tries in­volv­ing, among oth­ers, Cit­i­group in the US, Switzer­land's UBS, and Britain's HS­BC and Roy­al Bank of Scot­land. The banks' share price fell sharply as in­vestors ex­pect­ed hefty fines and tighter reg­u­la­tion. Bar­clays shares closed down 15.5 per cent, RBS 11.5 per cent, HS­BC 2.6 per cent and Lloyds Bank­ing Group 3.9 per cent.

UBS shares were down 3.8 per cent in af­ter­noon trad­ing, and Cit­i­group shares were down 0.1 per cent. Britain's Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Au­thor­i­ty cit­ed ev­i­dence that Bar­clays traders were, in some cas­es, in touch with peo­ple in oth­er banks. Tyrie said his com­mit­tee would sum­mon Bar­clays chief ex­ec­u­tive Bob Di­a­mond to ex­plain what hap­pened at the bank. Though Di­a­mond has de­cid­ed to waive his 2012 bonus in the wake of the fines, he's fac­ing calls to step down. Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron, when asked whether Di­a­mond should re­sign, said he thinks "the whole man­age­ment team have got some se­ri­ous ques­tions to an­swer. Let them an­swer those ques­tions first." The mas­sive fines are un­like­ly to be the end of the pain for Bar­clays. The cost of law­suits re­lat­ed to the LI­BOR scan­dal will like­ly be big­ger, said Sandy Chen, bank­ing an­a­lyst at Cenkos Se­cu­ri­ties. (AP)