Libor accused asked ‘Pete the Greek’ of UBS for help

The former trader charged with manipulating Libor asked a senior manager at UBS Group for help pushing the benchmark rate to suit his positions, according to emails shown to a London jury.

Thomas Hayes sent an email to Panagiotis Koutsogiannis, then the bank’s head of funding for the rates division, requesting that he approve a UBS trade to help move Libor lower.

“Hi mate, we have a big 1m fixing position over the next month,”Mr Hayes wrote in a July 1, 2008, email shown to the jury by prosecutors yesterday.

“My question is can I use some balance sheet in the market for 1m? We really need to get the fixing down.”

The move would “save the bank about 1m USD,” he added.

The 35-year-old Mr Hayes is accused of eight counts of conspiracy to manipulate the London interbank offered rate, a benchmark for financial products worldwide.

Mr Hayes, a former trader at UBS and Citigroup, is the first person to go on trial over the scandal. It is not clear whether Mr Koutsogiannis, who was known at the bank as ‘Pete the Greek’ complied with the request.

Prosecutors said that by that stage Mr Hayes’s relationship with the then Libor rate setter supervisor, Roger Darin, had deteriorated. Mr Koutsogiannis hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing.