Barclays bank chairman Marcus Agius to resign

Marcus Agius is to resign as the chairman of Barclays in the wake of the Libor lending rate scandal. There will be an announcement on Monday morning, BBC business editor Robert Peston says. It comes after Barclays was fined £290m ($450m) for attempting to manipulate the Libor inter-bank lending rate. Earlier, it emerged the Royal Bank of Scotland had sacked four traders over their alleged involvement in the Libor-fixing scandal. The dismissals happened at the end of last year. Barclays was fined after the Financial Services Authority (FSA) found its traders had lied about the interest rate other banks were charging it for loans. Investigations are also under way at RBS, HSBC, Citigroup and UBS. Giving a lower reading than the true rate would give the impression other banks thought it was a better risk to lend to than it was. Libor (London Inter Bank Offered Rate) is the rate at which banks in London lend money to each other. Diamond support Robert Peston said Mr Agius's decision was not wholly unexpected as he was first in the firing line as far as shareholders were concerned and Barclays had been thinking it needed a new chairman for some time. He said some shareholders did not think Mr Agius, who had been chairman for six years, was tough enough to stand up to Barclays boss Bob Diamond, who was regarded as very talented but also very headstrong. Mr Diamond has insisted he will not resign over the scandal. He is due to appear before the Treasury Select Committee on Wednesday, with Mr Agius set to follow on Thursday. In a letter to the committee last week, Mr Diamond condemned the inappropriate behaviour of a "small number" of employees who had tried to make profits for their own benefit. In his open letter to Andrew Tyrie MP, the chairman of the Commons Treasury Committee, Mr Diamond pointed out that authorities found no evidence that knowledge of the manipulation, for which it has been fined £290m, went any higher than "immediate desk supervisors". Our business editor said he believed Barclays board had "thrown its weight" behind Mr Diamond, considering him to be the best man to clean-up the bank's culture. Earlier, the head of the Financial Services Authority, Lord Turner, said the FSA's fine for Barclays was its strongest currently available sanction and the law should be tightened to tackle misbehaviour in banking. He told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme there should be a presumption a director of a failed bank should not work in the industry again. Business Secretary Vince Cable is considering criminal sanctions for bank directors. He said those in charge of failed banks should face prosecution - a view echoed by Lord Turner. Ministers have announced an independent review of the Libor workings, which will be established next week and report by the end of summer. On Saturday, Labour leader Ed Miliband called for a public inquiry into the customs and practices of the banking industry.