Tom Hayes' failed appeal: sad conclusion for the trader who started on £2.70 an hour

Tom Hayes, the ex-UBS and Citi trader who spent five years in some of the UK's most brutal prisons for rigging the LIBOR rate, today lost his appeal. It's a blow to a man who lost both his livelihood and his relationship as a result of his conviction, and who'd hoped to clear his name. 

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Hayes was able to contest his criminal conviction after the Criminal Cases Review Commission deemed he would have a reasonable chance of success on the grounds that a US court overturned the convictions of Deutsche Bank traders Matthew Connolly and Gavin Black in September 2023. However, the British court of appeal said today that the US ruling did not cast doubt upon Hayes' conviction under English law. 

Connolly this morning retweeted a comment from Paul Carlier, a former FX trader at UBS, who describes himself as a "whistleblower" who provides "expert help for banking claimants." Carlier described Hayes' failed appeal as a "dark day for UK justice" and said "the key point was the same and the U.S Courts accepted the new evidence and overturned the convictions."

While Carlier said the appeal court judge stated that,"the LIBOR rate MUST be the LOWEST rate at which they could borrow,” Carlier pointed to,"a mountain of evidence proving that it was acceptable to submit any rate within the traded range and that is can be submitted to suit the commercial position of the bank." 

Like Gary Stevenson, the former Citi trader who's written a book about his time in banking and is now campaigning for a wealth tax, Hayes came from a single parent family and began his working life in poorly paid jobs before he became a trader.

Before his internship at UBS, Hayes told us he earned £2.70 an hour working 80-hour weeks in a kitchen. 

Hayes was well paid at UBS, where he reportedly made $260m in profits for the bank over a three-year period. At one point, he had a seven-bedroom house in Surrey and was wined and dined by US banks that wanted to hire him.

When we spoke to Hayes last year, though, he was living in a small flat in London's Docklands owned by his parents. Divorced and with multiple sclerosis, he was facing an £879k possession order. “I was very bitter, but I came to terms with it,” he told us.

Following today's defeat, Hayes vowed to fight on. Bloomberg said he plans to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights. 

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