LONDON — Questions about the close links between banking regulators and the financial institutions they oversee will come into focus on Monday, when a top official at Britain’s central bank appears before a parliamentary committee here looking into the manipulation of global interest rates.
Paul Tucker, a deputy governor at the Bank of England, will give evidence on whether senior government officials put pressure on Barclays to lower its submissions to the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. Barclays agreed in late June to pay some $450 million to settle accusations from US and British authorities that its traders and senior executives had manipulated the rate, which underpins trillions of dollars of corporate loans, home mortgages, and derivatives around the world.
Tucker’s testimony could put him at loggerheads with Robert E. Diamond Jr., the former chief executive of Barclays, who told the same committee last week that the Bank of England, as well as the Financial Services Authority of Britain and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, had repeatedly been informed about the issue, but had not moved to stop it.
After resigning last Tuesday, Diamond released an e-mail last week that indicated that Tucker had questioned why the bank was submitting rates consistently higher than rivals, a sign of relatively poor health.
How Tucker responds promises to be a pivotal in the central banker’s career. The 54-year-old Cambridge graduate is a leading candidate to replace Mervyn King next year in the top job as the governor of the Bank of England, one of the world’s most important central banks.
‘‘The focus will be on whether his recollection tallies with what Bob Diamond told us,’’ said Pat McFadden, a Labor member of Parliament who sits on the committee overseeing Tucker’s testimony. ‘‘We want to know if anyone at the Bank of England or in other government departments asked Barclays to lower its Libor submissions.’’
Through a spokeswoman, Tucker declined to comment.
The intense scrutiny confronting Tucker follows a career spanning more than three decades at the Bank of England. After brief stints in the 1980s at the British bank Baring Brothers and with the Hong Kong government, he rose through the ranks to become the British central bank’s deputy governor in charge of financial stability in 2009.
Tucker also is a leading figure in global efforts to overhaul financial regulation. He currently holds senior positions at both the Financial Stability Board and the Global Economy Meeting, whose memberships comprise officials from the world’s leading central banks.