Adrian Darbishire KC and Tom Doble of QEB Hollis Whiteman represent Tom Hayes in this significant appeal before the Supreme Court today.  The hearing is expected to last three days.

The appeal centres on the scope of dishonesty in LIBOR and EURIBOR rate submissions and raises fundamental questions about the interpretation of financial benchmarks and the legal standards applied to traders’ conduct in the banking sector.  It will make findings on two issues: first, whether a LIBOR or EURIBOR submission is automatically dishonest if it is influenced by a trading advantage and secondly whether a LIBOR or EURIBOR submission must be at the single cheapest rate available at the time of the submissions or whether it can be selected from a range of potential borrowing rates.

The appellants, Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, are former traders at major banks. Mr Hayes was convicted in 2015 of conspiracy to defraud for manipulating LIBOR rates, while Mr Palombo was convicted in 2019 for similar conduct concerning EURIBOR. Their convictions were based on the principle that banks were prohibited from considering commercial interests when submitting benchmark rates. Both previously appealed unsuccessfully - Mr Hayes in 2015 and Mr Palombo in 2020. 

The case gained renewed significance following a 2022 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which overturned convictions of two traders on the basis that banks were permitted to factor in trading advantages when making LIBOR submissions. The appellants argue that this judgment exposes a divergence between UK and US legal interpretations of LIBOR, raising concerns about the fairness of their convictions.

Following this development, the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred both convictions to the Court of Appeal in 2023. However, the Court of Appeal upheld the convictions, this prompted today’s appeal to the Supreme Court. In this appeal to the Supreme Court, it will be argued that the juries that convicted Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo were unfairly told that taking the bank’s commercial interest into account was prohibited.

A livestream of the appeal can be found here.