Banking regulators are looking at the way important financial benchmarks have been calculated, amid allegations that they have been manipulated by traders. Could the practice of "front running" swamp the UK banking industry in a new scandal? Front running is a form of market manipulation, which on the currency markets, involves traders using insider information to play the markets and profit from institutional customers such as pension funds. It is alleged those pension funds could be losing millions of pounds as a result, which would have an impact on members of the schemes.

A civil lawsuit lodged in the New York courts has been commenced against some US and UK banks including Barclays, HSBC and RBS. They declined to comment on the specific allegations raised in the US case. However, there have been questions over many banks' practices on the foreign exchange markets ever since the Libor scandal emerged at the end of 2007, And financial experts who have analysed trading on the foreign exchange market say they have identified numerous patterns which could be the result of front running.....Read more here