Jury retires in Libor hearing

The jury in the London trial of five former Barclays traders charged with conspiracy to manipulate global Libor interest rates yesterday retired to consider its verdict after hearing more than 10 weeks of evidence.

Stylianos Contogoulas, Jonathan Mathew, Jay Merchant, Alex Pabon and Ryan Reich each deny one count of dishonestly skewing Libor, a benchmark for rates on about $450 trillion of loans and contracts worldwide, to boost their profits and defraud others between June 2005 and September 2007.

In London’s third Libor trial, Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) alleges the men plotted with former colleague Peter Johnson and others at Barclays to rig the London interbank offered rate (Libor), a rate designed to reflect banks’ costs of borrowing from each other.