Boss ‘hit Libor trader with a baseball bat’

A BARCLAYS trader was “whacked” across the back of the head with a mini baseball bat when he made mistakes at work, the Libor-rigging trial has heard.

Jonathan Mathew joined the bank at 19, having not had any formal training.

The 35-year-old told Southwark Crown Court how senior trader Peter Johnson was a “hard taskmaster” and would berate him in the office when he got things wrong. Mathew said that although Johnson was verbally aggressive, he was a “good teacher”.

He told jurors: “He had a 12inch baseball bat on his desk and he whacked me across the back of the head. It wasn’t particularly hard. It was designed to humiliate me.”

Mathew, Stylianos Contogoulas, 44, Jay Vijay Merchant, 45, Alex Pabon, 37, and Ryan Reich, 34, are accused of manipulating the US dollar London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) between June 1 2005 and August 31 2007. The trial continues.