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Libor Trial: 'Bosses Knew What I Was Doing'

Libor Trial: 'Bosses Knew What I Was Doing'

A City trader accused of rigging a key interest rate on which trillions of dollars of financial deals are based has told a court "no one batted an eyelid" at what he was doing.

Tom Hayes said "requests" over the benchmark lending rate, known as Libor, were commonplace and known about by his bosses.

The 35-year-old told jurors he had been portrayed as "the Jesse James of Libor", but insisted he had done nothing "clandestine".

Requests in connection with Libor rates were "more of a chancing my arm thing", he told the court.

The former UBS and Citigroup trader, of Fleet in Hampshire, is on trial for eight counts of conspiracy to defraud between 2006 and 2010, all of which he denies.

It is claimed he acted as a "ringmaster" in a massive fraud involving the Libor rate.

Mukul Chawla QC for the prosecution said Libor rates were "rigged to his (Hayes) financial advantage and therefore inevitably to the financial disadvantage of those with whom he was trading".

But Hayes, who has been diagnosed with mild Asperger's syndrome, told the court: "Everything I did was in complete transparency with my line managers and direct managers.

"There was never anything I did that my managers were not aware of."

His defence counsel Neil Hawes QC, asked him: "Do you accept that you have acted dishonestly?"

Hayes replied: "No, I don't accept that."

Hayes said he thought there was "no downside" to making Libor rate requests.

He told the court: "I was hungry to do the best job I could do. Hungry because of the performance metric and hungry because of the way I was being judged. I was absolutely hungry to do a good job."

And Hayes claimed his performance was not related to setting the Libor rates.

"It's been a big misconception in the media that my profit and loss came from the Libor moving around," he said.

Mr Hawes said: "You have suggested that at that stage it (requesting Libor rates) was commonplace."

"Yes," Hayes said.

"That at that stage it was accepted," Mr Hawes added.

Hayes answered: "Yes, it's just the way the market was."

"Did anyone at that stage say 'we shouldn't be doing this'?" Mr Hawes said.

In response, Hayes said: "No one batted an eyelid".