Latest news with #Tom Hayes
Irish Times
6 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
When does a bad business decision become illegal?
If you've come across Libor in your personal life, there is a good chance you have, or had, a mortgage or indeed any sort of loan with a United Kingdom bank. The London Interbank Offer Rate (Libor) – essentially the average interest rate at which several banks in the City of London would lend to each other – was, until 2021, used as a reference rate for any number of financial products around the world, from consumer loans to derivatives. 'Libor plus x per cent' was as widely used to set interest rates on products worth trillions of dollars. Yet it became mired in scandal amid accusations of manipulation during the global financial crisis. A string of traders were convicted, and banks took collective fines of close to $10 billion. One of those traders, Tom Hayes, became the poster boy for the scandal. The former UBS and Citigroup dealer was convicted in 2015 of eight counts of conspiracy to defraud – later reduced to 11 on appeal. It was a notable sentence – one of the longest for white collar crime in the UK up to that point. READ MORE Hayes protested his innocence throughout the process, eventually appealing to the supreme court. On Wednesday, the court quashed his conviction, along with that of another trader, because the juries in both cases had been misdirected by the judges at both trials. It's a stunning move that throws a new light on the case that had held the City of London's attention for more than a decade. It also raises questions about the convictions of other traders who were found guilty of offences tied to the Libor scandal. The Hayes case in particular threw a light on the inner workings of some parts of the big banks. The scandal fed into the worst perceptions of bankers at a time when public sympathy for city boys was in even shorter supply than usual, coming as it did during the depths of the financial crisis and what has since become known as the Great Recession. It also renews the now almost two-decade-old question that also has ramifications for the Republic and the apparent lack of convictions for bankers involved in the financial crash in this country: at what point does a bad business decision become a law-breaking one?
BBC News
6 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
What next after City rate-rigging convictions quashed?
After a decade-long legal battle, two former City traders who were at the centre of one of the biggest scandals of the financial crisis have had their rate-rigging convictions Hayes and Carlo Palombo were jailed following trials for manipulating the interest rates used for loans between banks, known as Tuesday, their convictions were overturned in a ruling that raises many questions. Could Hayes and Palombo claim compensation? In the UK, defendants who have had their convictions overturned due to a miscarriage of justice can potentially claim compensation. But it is not key factor determining eligibility is whether the overturned conviction was deemed "unsafe" and whether a new or newly discovered fact proves innocence "beyond reasonable doubt".If those conditions are met, compensation may be awarded by the Ministry of Justice, but even then, deductions for living expenses during imprisonment may Hayes told BBC's Newsnight on Wednesday: "It would be great to get some compensation, but I won't get any from the British government. I've made peace with that."There could be another way. After a US court threw out their rate-rigging convictions three and a half years ago, defendants including former Deutsche Bank trader, Matt Connolly, and his British former colleague, Gavin Black, sued their former employer for malicious prosecution, later agreeing confidential settlements. Could other convicted traders appeal? Seven other traders, who were sentenced to jail for rigging interest rates, are expected to do Hayes' conviction in 2015, all the brokers he was alleged to have conspired with to manipulate interest rates were acquitted in a separate in 2016, three former Barclays traders – Jay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew and Alex Pabon – were convicted of manipulating Libor. Together with Peter Johnson, who had pleaded guilty before the trial, they were given prison sentences in July 2016 ranging from two years and nine months to six serving out their time and emerging from jail, they are now taking advice from lawyers and are likely to apply to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to refer their cases back to the Court of the Supreme Court has now ruled in Hayes and Palombo's favour, that is likely to be a straightforward process compared to the seven-year struggle of Hayes to convince the CCRC to refer his case. Other questions to be answered Mr Hayes has said he wants to see "a public inquiry into how what happened to us happened"."How was the Court of Appeal continually able to frustrate attempts to get this matter heard by the Supreme Court?" he Palombo said he "100%" believed he was the scapegoat for the anti-bank backlash following the 2008 financial crash. He questioned why he, as a junior trader at Barclays, was singled politicians including David Davis, John McDonnell and Lord Tyrie, who conducted a short parliamentary inquiry into Libor manipulation in 2012, have said there should be a public have argued in particular for a probe of the interest rate manipulation ordered by banks' senior managers, under pressure from central banks and governments including the Bank of England, as exposed the BBC Radio 4 series The Lowball are also questions about how the Serious Fraud Office also took most of its evidence from external lawyers hired by Barclays, UBS or Deutsche Bank to investigate of the reasons Connolly and Black brought the cases is that a judge in the US ruled that US prosecutors at the Department of Justice had "outsourced" their investigation to the target of the investigation – Deutsche Bank. Allowing banks to investigate themselves by employing external law, firms who then handed over evidence to the US Department of Justice, put employers in a "uniquely coercive position" towards employees, ruled judge Colleen McMahon.
Times
6 days ago
- Business
- Times
Tom Hayes verdict is yet another blow to the Serious Fraud Office
The conviction of Tom Hayes for rate rigging in 2015 came at a crunch moment for the Serious Fraud Office. Reeling from a string of blunders in the years before Hayes's trial, the successful prosecution of the former trader was a much-needed win for the agency at a time when its very existence was in doubt and it was also arguably the most significant result for the agency's then director, Sir David Green KC. By the same token, the quashing of Hayes's conviction on Wednesday by the Supreme Court also comes at a difficult moment for the crime-fighting body. In the decade since Hayes was sent to prison, the SFO's reputation has been marred by another series of setbacks that have once again led to questions about the future of the agency.
