Britain's financial watchdog fines and bans former RBS trader

By Emma Rumney

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's financial watchdog has fined former Royal Bank of Scotland interest rate derivatives trader Neil Danziger 250,000 pounds ($338,000) and banned him from working in any regulated financial activity, it said on Monday.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said Danziger, who worked at RBS trading products referenced to Japanese Yen Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate), was knowingly involved in RBS's failure to observe proper standards of market conduct between 2007 and 2010.

"Proper standards of market conduct reflect the interests of the whole community in the well-being of our financial markets," said Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA.

"Mr Danziger's reckless disregard of these standards has no place in the financial services industry."

Danziger was dismissed by RBS as a result of the Libor scandal at the end of 2011.

Libor underpins hundreds of trillions of dollars of transactions and is used to set rates on credit cards, student loans and mortgages. It was at the centre of a global scandal over rate rigging at a number of the world's biggest banks.

The FCA said Danziger had routinely made requests to RBS's primary submitters with the intention of benefitting the trading positions for which he and other derivatives traders were responsible, and took those positions into account when acting as a substitute submitter.

It also said Danziger entered into 28 "wash trades" - risk-free trades, with the same party, in pairs that cancel each other and for which there was no legitimate commercial rationale - to facilitate brokerage payments to two firms for hospitality.

(Reporting by Emma Rumney; Editing by Keith Weir)