The UK Court of Appeal quashed the convictions of five former Barclays traders on October 7. The decision covered Jay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Philippe Moryoussef, Alex Pabon and Colin Bermingham. The five had received prison sentences after separate trials concerning alleged manipulation of the Libor and Euribor interest-rate benchmarks.
The appeals followed a UK Supreme Court judgment in 2025 that overturned the convictions of former trader Tom Hayes and former Barclays trader Carlo Palombo. The Supreme Court found that trial judges had misdirected juries and that legal errors had undermined the fairness of those proceedings. That judgment created the basis for the Court of Appeal to reconsider the five convictions.
SUPREME COURT RULING RESHAPED THE APPEALS
Merchant, Mathew and Pabon had been convicted in the Libor prosecution, while Moryoussef and Bermingham were convicted in Euribor cases. Reuters reported that the five were sentenced to terms ranging from 33 months to eight years between 2016 and 2019. Moryoussef was tried in his absence after leaving Britain for France.
The Serious Fraud Office did not contest the five appeals. In a statement reported by Reuters, the agency noted that the Supreme Court had found ample evidence on which a properly directed jury could have convicted Hayes and Palombo. It nevertheless said that, after considering the judgment and the full circumstances, it did not oppose these appeals.
A RELATED DEUTSCHE BANK APPEAL REMAINS
Libor was designed to estimate the rates at which banks would lend to one another, while Euribor is a euro-area benchmark. Reuters said the benchmarks once underpinned about $450 trillion of financial contracts, ranging from derivatives to student loans. The convictions became prominent cases in the Serious Fraud Office's post-financial-crisis enforcement record.
A separate appeal by former Deutsche Bank trader Christian Bittar was expected to be heard on October 9. Reuters reported that the Serious Fraud Office was contesting that appeal, which follows Bittar's guilty plea, unlike the five Barclays cases. Its outcome will be the next test of how the Supreme Court judgment affects the remaining UK rate-rigging convictions.