LONDON—A jury here convicted Tom Hayes, a former trader at UBS
AG and Citigroup Inc., with fraudulently trying to rig the London
interbank offered rate, or Libor, the first criminal conviction of
an individual for manipulating the widely used benchmark.
Mr. Hayes, a mildly autistic mathematician whose quirky
personality earned him the nickname "Rain Man" among bank
colleagues, faces a jail sentence of potentially more than 10
years. A judge will sentence him at a later date.
Mr. Hayes, a 35-year-old Briton who worked in Tokyo during the
period of his crimes, was charged in June 2013 with eight counts of
conspiracy to defraud. He was convicted on all of those counts.
The conviction is a major victory for the U.K.'s Serious Fraud
Office, which brought the case and whose director has described the
Libor prosecutions as the agency's top priority. It also represents
a symbolic win for authorities elsewhere in the world that have
spent as much as seven years investigating the manipulation of
Libor.
Write to David Enrich at david.enrich@wsj.com
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires