Ex-Deutsche Bank Trader Says He Didn’t Know Bittar Rigged Rates

(Bloomberg) -- A former senior executive at Deutsche Bank AG in Frankfurt said he didn’t know that convicted trader Christian Bittar was attempting to rig a key interest rate.

Andreas Hauschild said on his first day of testimony in a London court that he wouldn’t have approved if he had known that Bittar was sharing Euribor rate submissions with other banks.

Hauschild, 54, is charged with conspiring with Bittar and traders at Barclays Plc to fix the benchmark Euribor rate, which is tied to trillions of dollars worth of loans and derivatives. The SFO investigation was part of a wider probe into benchmark rates, the most famous of which was Libor.

His attorney, Duncan Penny, painted a picture of a senior manager who was constantly in the air and rarely at his desk. Hauschild himself said he never directly made submissions, but on the trading side he acknowledged that his Frankfurt colleagues spoke with Bittar in London regarding short-term cash derivative bets.

Bittar at Deutsche Bank, his friend Philippe Moryoussef at Barclays, and two other traders at the British bank were convicted of manipulating the Euro interbank offered rate. Hauschild said that he didn’t know the Barclays trio.

Deutsche Bank provided no training for Euribor submissions, according to Hauschild, a married father of two.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Browning in London at jbrowning9@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Christopher Elser

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