Overview

• A five-judge panel unanimously ruled on July 23 that inaccurate and unfair instructions to juries in the Libor and Euribor trials undermined the fairness of both cases.
• Tom Hayes’s 2015 conviction for manipulating the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate and Carlo Palombo’s 2019 verdict for submitting false Euribor rates were vacated as unsafe.
• The Serious Fraud Office, which had opposed both appeals, said it would not pursue a retrial, ending a decade-long legal battle.
• Legal experts caution that the ruling could trigger reviews of other benchmark-manipulation convictions secured by the SFO.
• Libor and Euribor underpinned roughly $400 trillion in financial contracts before their phase-out in 2023, and the scandal led to more than $9 billion in fines for major banks.