Court of Appeal Overturns Convictions of Five Former Barclays Traders in Libor Rate-Rigging Case

Five former Barclays traders who were jailed for their roles in the Libor interest rate-rigging scandal have had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal, in a ruling that marks a significant moment in one of the most contentious episodes of the 2008 financial crisis era.

Jay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Philippe Moryoussef, Alex Pabon and Colin Bermingham were convicted following separate trials for manipulating benchmark interest rates used for lending between banks. Their convictions were overturned on Wednesday by the Court of Appeal, following a lengthy legal campaign that has gradually unravelled the prosecutions brought against City traders over rate-rigging.

The ruling follows a series of successful appeals by other former traders, most notably Tom Hayes, a former UBS and Citigroup trader who became the first person jailed over the Libor scandal. Hayes won a decade-long legal battle to have his conviction overturned at the Supreme Court in July 2025, alongside fellow trader Carlo Palombo. Those victories opened the door for others convicted in the same era to challenge their own convictions.

Mathew, 45, spoke of the personal toll the case had taken on him. He described the "strain" of the past ten years as a heavy burden, saying the quashing of his conviction was not merely about correcting the record but about receiving validation that an injustice had occurred. He added that having two children made it especially important to him that his name had been cleared for their sake.

Merchant, 55, said he looked forward to moving on with his life, but indicated that part of that process would involve pursuing accountability for those he believes were responsible for what happened to him and his co-defendants.

Lord Justice Edis, delivering the ruling, said the full reasons behind the decision to overturn the convictions would be provided later on Wednesday. Merchant, Mathew, Pabon and Bermingham had each served various jail terms, while Moryoussef was sentenced in his absence in 2018 and never returned to the UK to serve his time after France declined to extradite him.

The prosecutions centred on the manipulation of two key interest rate mechanisms: Libor and Euribor. At the time, these benchmarks were used to set borrowing costs on a wide range of financial products, including mortgages and car finance deals. Because they affected the cost of borrowing for millions of ordinary people, any distortion of the rates carried enormous significance for the wider economy.

Each of the five Barclays traders had originally been convicted of a single count of conspiracy to defraud, arising from alleged attempts to influence financial benchmark rates. Prosecutors presented them as emblematic of banker greed at a time of intense public anger and backlash during the financial crisis, when the banking sector was widely blamed for triggering a global downturn while being shielded by taxpayer-funded bailouts.

The financial crisis began in 2008, sending economic shockwaves around the world and pushing many countries into recession. The Libor scandal erupted in 2012, when it emerged that banks had been misrepresenting their positions during the process of setting the lending rate at the height of the crisis, thereby boosting profits and concealing difficulties. Between 2015 and 2019, some 19 City traders were convicted across nine criminal trials held in London and New York.

The legal landscape has shifted dramatically in recent years. Hayes and Palombo argued that they had been wrongly prosecuted for what were normal commercial practices, pursued in order to appease public anger towards the banks over the financial crisis. Hayes's victory at the Supreme Court in July 2025, alongside Palombo's, was a turning point that paved the way for Wednesday's successful appeals.

With the latest ruling, only two traders remain convicted over interest rate rigging: former Deutsche Bank trader Christian Bittar and former Barclays trader Peter Johnson. Bittar was jailed in 2018 after pleading guilty and served two years in prison; he is due to challenge his conviction on 9 October. Johnson was the original whistleblower who drew attention to the Libor scandal, but he pleaded guilty on advice that he had little prospect of winning at trial. He too hopes to appeal.

The decision raises broader questions about the Serious Fraud Office's pursuit of individual bankers in the aftermath of the financial crisis, and whether the prosecutions were built on a legal theory that the courts have now rejected. The quashing of five more convictions will intensify scrutiny of how the cases were brought and whether the traders functioned as scapegoats for systemic failures within the banking industry. For the men involved, the ruling brings an end to years of legal uncertainty, though questions about accountability for the financial crisis itself remain unresolved.