Every morning, 16 banks across the City of London and Canary Wharf had to answer a question: “At what rate could the bank borrow funds by asking for and accepting inter-bank offers in a reasonable market size just prior to 11am?”
This unwieldy “Libor question” bears repeating in any analysis of Tom Hayes’s long, and so far consistently unsuccessful, protests that he was wrongly convicted of “rigging” the interest rate benchmark.
As the Court of Appeal rejected the appeals of Hayes, 44, and Carlo Palombo, 45, another trader, on all grounds on Wednesday, it backed up an interpretation of that question long preferred by English courts which convicted traders have long railed against — and one which appears to contradict the findings of a United
