Banker guilty of rate rigging

A FORMER Barclays banker has been convicted of conspiring to manipulate global Euribor interest rates in London’s sixth benchmark rate-rigging trial.

Anglo-Italian Carlo Palombo, 40, was found guilty after a two-month trial at Southwark Crown Court. Co- defendant Sisse Bohart, a 41year-old Dane was acquitted. The jury has not reached a decision on a third defendant, Colin Bermingham, 62.

The defendants were charged with dishonestly manipulating Euribor – a benchmark that helps determine rates on trillions of pounds worth of global financial contracts and loans – between 2005 and 2009, by ignoring rules that they should be set independently of commercial interests and prejudicing the economic interest of others.

The verdicts bring to eight the number of bankers convicted of benchmark rate-rigging in prosecutions by the Serious Fraud Office.