City profiles

Barclays’s Libor trio The conviction of three former Barclays bankers for conspiring to rig Libor interest rates marks a victory for the Serious Fraud Office in its ongoing investigation, said Simon Bowers in The Guardian. During a threemonth trial, the defendants, who included Barclays’s former “star trader” Jay Merchant (pictured), gave various explanations for their behaviour. But the jury found they had “knowingly” manipulated the dollar Libor rate to favour their own derivative positions, in a transatlantic conspiracy running from 2005 to 2007. Email evidence made that plain. One message read: “We just need to f***ing smash it. Have set it low.” Before his banking career, Merchant, 45, who holds both Indian and British nationality, had been one of India’s top tennis players. His tactic during the trial was to smash the ball into Barclays’s court, claiming that senior figures – including the former co-head of the investment bank, Eric Bommensath – knew about the practice. Bommensath denied this. The two other traders convicted, Jonathan Mathew, 35, and Alex Pabon, 38, also insisted that their actions were “considered normal practice”, said The Times. Mathew, who is dyslexic and partially deaf, painted a dark picture of “institutional bullying”, claiming he had once been “whacked across the back of the head” with a baseball bat by his boss (Peter Johnson, who had earlier pleaded guilty to Libor-rigging) and called a “deaf git”. All three defendants now face lengthy prison terms. Barclays isn’t out of the woods yet either. The SFO is investigating two more alleged Libor-fixing plots at the bank.