A panel of European Union lawmakers will ask regulators fromthree continents today why authorities failed to crack down on aculture of rigging interest rates.

Michel Barnier, the EU's financial services chief, will testifyto a European Parliament panel along with Gary Gensler, chairman ofthe U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Masamichi Kono,board chairman of the International Organization of SecuritiesCommissions, in Brussels today.

Confidence in Libor, the benchmark interest rate for more than$500 trillion of securities, plummeted following Barclays Plc'sadmission in June that it submitted false rates. The revelationsprovoked renewed calls for tougher oversight of the financialsystem and pushed regulatory and criminal probes of interbanklending rates to the top of the political agenda.