FCA Revokes Four LIBOR and EURIBOR Bans After Convictions Quashed

The Financial Conduct Authority on 16 October 2026 revoked the financial-services bans of Colin Bermingham, Philippe Moryoussef, Jonathan Mathew and Christian Bittar after their criminal convictions in LIBOR and EURIBOR benchmark cases were overturned by the Court of Appeal. In a statement, the regulator said the convictions had formed the basis on which it took its action, and that it had removed the associated Final Notices from FCA channels. It will take no further action against the four individuals in relation to the matter.

The move follows the regulator’s decision on 25 July 2025 to discontinue proceedings against Tom Hayes and revoke Carlo Palombo’s prohibition order after the Supreme Court quashed their criminal convictions. Palombo had been banned from November 2022, while Hayes had referred the FCA’s decision against him to the Upper Tribunal. The FCA said at the time that it would take no further action against either individual.

Court of Appeal Rulings in October 2026

On 7 October 2026 the Court of Appeal overturned the convictions of Mathew, Jay Merchant, Alex Pabon, Moryoussef and Bermingham, according to the Serious Fraud Office, which brought the prosecutions. The SFO said it did not oppose the appeals of the five defendants convicted following trial and had communicated that decision to each of the people affected last year. On 9 October 2026 the court overturned the conviction of Bittar, who had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud. The SFO said that decision followed earlier rulings overturning the convictions of seven LIBOR and EURIBOR defendants whose cases had proceeded to trial.

“We argued for a different outcome but respect the court’s decision in relation to Christian Bittar,” said Jason Williams, head of division at the SFO. He added that the office remains committed to tackling the most complex fraud, bribery and corruption.

The FCA’s statement names four of the individuals covered by the October rulings. It does not name Merchant or Pabon, the two other defendants whose convictions the Court of Appeal overturned on 7 October 2026.

From the Supreme Court Judgment to the CCRC Referrals

The appeals followed the UK Supreme Court judgment of 23 July 2025 in R v Hayes, neutral citation 2025 UKSC 29, handed down after hearings held from 25 to 27 March 2025. Hayes was convicted on 3 August 2015 of conspiracy to defraud for manipulating LIBOR rates, and Palombo was convicted in 2019 of conspiring to manipulate EURIBOR rates. The issue before the court was whether, on the proper construction of the LIBOR and EURIBOR definitions, a submission influenced by trading advantage was for that reason not a genuine or honest answer to the question the definitions pose, and whether a submission had to be an assessment of the single cheapest rate at which a bank could borrow rather than a selection from within a range of borrowing rates.

The SFO said the Supreme Court determined that the legal directions given to the jury were incorrect in the Hayes and Palombo trials, making their convictions unsafe, and that it decided it would not be in the public interest to seek a retrial. “The Supreme Court found the jury, if properly directed, had ample evidence to convict Hayes and Palombo and left it open to us to seek permission for a re-trial,” Williams said in October 2025. “We’ve decided this wouldn’t be in the public interest due to various factors including that the defendants have already served prison sentences.”

The Criminal Cases Review Commission had referred Hayes’ and Palombo’s convictions to the Court of Appeal on 6 July 2023 and 12 October 2023 respectively, after a January 2022 ruling by the United States Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit that reversed the convictions of two former traders for LIBOR manipulation. The Court of Appeal dismissed that further appeal in its judgment 2024 EWCA Crim 304 before the case reached the Supreme Court.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the convictions of the five traders back to the courts on 29 January 2026, after receiving their applications in August 2025. Pabon, Merchant and Mathew were convicted of conspiracy to defraud in 2016 at Southwark Crown Court and were given prison sentences ranging from two to six and a half years; Pabon and Merchant were LIBOR traders based in New York, while Mathew was a LIBOR submitter and junior trader based in London. Moryoussef, a senior trader based in London, was convicted of conspiracy to defraud in 2018 and sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment. Bermingham, who was responsible for making Barclays’ daily EURIBOR submissions, was convicted in 2019 alongside Palombo and given a five-year prison sentence.

The CCRC determined there was no distinguishing factor between these five cases and those of Hayes and Palombo, concluding that jury misdirection and legal errors undermined the safety of all the convictions. The commission describes LIBOR as the average interest rate that leading banks in London estimate they would be charged when borrowing from other banks, and EURIBOR as a similar reference rate for euro zone banks.

The SFO said the Supreme Court judgment came thirteen years after it first investigated the practices used by some traders and submitters at selected banks to influence the benchmark rates. Its investigation led to nine convictions of senior bankers for fraud offences, two by guilty plea and seven by jury verdicts. In a 29 August 2025 update, the SFO said the circumstances behind the upheld Hayes and Palombo appeals could also apply to Mathew, Merchant, Pabon, Moryoussef and Bermingham, while it considered the conviction of Peter Johnson, who had pleaded guilty, safe. The office completed its review on 6 October 2025, at that point also judging Bittar’s conviction safe. The SFO said LIBOR and EURIBOR affected the value of hundreds of trillions of dollars’ worth of financial products around the world, including pensions, mortgages and savings.