By Louise Egan and William Schomberg WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global regulators will provide more clarity in a year's time on guidelines for financial benchmarks like Libor, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney said on Thursday, after a global rate-rigging scandal led to calls for reform of the system. Finance officials from the Group of 20 major economies plan to task the Financial Stability Board (FSB) - which Carney heads - with overseeing the reform of such benchmarks, two sources familiar with the situation told Reuters.

Japan's financial watchdog on Friday gave a slap on the wrist to the local arm of Royal Bank of Scotland over a rate-fixing scandal that saw the firm fined $612 million by UK and US regulators. Despite noting that a local trader had played a part in the LIBOR rigging that has rocked confidence in the financial world and saying the actions "could undermine the market integrity", the regulator issued little more than a ticking off.

The Bank of England on Thursday voted to leave its main lending rate at a record-low level of 0.50 percent and refrained from pumping out more new cash to help stimulate Britain's recession-threatened economy. "The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee today voted to maintain the official Bank Rate paid on commercial bank reserves at 0.5 percent," the BoE said in a brief statement at the conclusion of its regular monthly meeting. bcp/rfj/arp

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The Singapore High Court has agreed to a request by UBS AG <UBSN.VX> to seal documents in two cases brought by traders fired by the bank during its investigation into reference rate manipulation, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said. UBS argued in an affidavit last month that premature disclosures regarding the bank's investigation into the two former traders would hamper its ongoing probe, as well as a review under way globally by regulators who are looking into the manipulation of rate fixings.