Five out of six former stockbrokers on trial accused of conspiring to rig the Libor benchmark interest rate have been acquitted.
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The judge at Southwark Crown Court asked the jury to consider a majority verdict on a sixth defendant.
The scandal of traders and brokers rigging the rate to benefit their own trades was uncovered in 2012, but Hayes, jailed for 11 years, is so far the only person to have gone to prison for LIBOR rigging.
The world’s third Libor trial, that kicked off four months ago, comes more than seven years after USA regulators first examined how Libor rates were set.
Noel Cryan, 49, of Chislehurst, Kent; Danny Wilkinson, 48, of Hornchurch, Essex; Colin Goodman, 53, of Epsom, Surrey; James Gilmour, 50 of Benfleet, Essex; and Terry Farr, 44, of Southend-on-Sea in Essex – have all been cleared of conspiracy to defraud by trying to manipulate the Libor rate linked to the Yen.
Icap, who employed Mr Read, Mr Goodman and Mr Wilkinson, refused to comment as they have done throughout the trial.
Defense lawyers argued the acquitted brokers were not part of a conspiracy, but instead were employees who worked in a flawed, financial industry-run system in which banks regularly set rates created to benefit their respective trading positions.
Prosecutors claimed that Lord Libor and the others were recruited by Hayes to collude and manipulate banks’ Libor submissions.
A spokesman for Tullett said the company noted the jury’s findings in relation to Cryan but had nothing to add. ICAP declined to comment and a call to RP Martin went unanswered.
SFO director David Green defended the decision to pursue the failed cases. “By their verdicts the jury have said that they could not be sure that this was the case”.
He said: “Nobody could sensibly suggest that these charges should not have been brought and considered by a jury”.
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The brokers were brought to trial as a result of an SFO investigation, which alleged that they had conspired with Hayes to skew Libor.
