Aug 13 (Reuters) - Jay V. Merchant, who has come under
federal scrutiny in the Libor manipulation scandal related to
his tenure at Barclays Plc, left his position as head of swap
trading at UBS on Monday, a UBS spokeswoman confirmed.
Merchant, who worked for Barclays in New York from 2006 to
2009, is being looked at by U.S. authorities over his activities
while working at Barclays' swaps desk in New York.
Merchant's lawyer, John Kenney, was not immediately available
for comment.
His departure comes in the wake of a Reuters report that
another former Barclays trader, Ryan Reich, "has cooperated"
with the federal criminal probe into the alleged rigging of
international benchmark interest rates. Merchant was one of
Reich's supervising traders at Barclays.
Libor, the London interbank offered rate, is used to set
rates on trillions of dollars of contracts for everything from
home mortgages to credit cards. The investigation has embroiled
banks on both sides of the Atlantic and involves yen and euro
rates as well as those for the dollar.
Industry records report that Merchant began working for
Barclays in 1998 and remained with the British bank until the
end of 2009, after which he went to head a swaps trading desk
for UBS in Stamford, Connecticut.
Records maintained by UK securities regulators also show
that Merchant was registered as working in Britain from 2001
through parts of 2007.
