In short
Rubbish Talk rates the Guardian's headline that "ex-Barclays traders jailed for rigging interest rates have convictions quashed" a 1/10 because the Court of Appeal's acquittal of all five men on 7 October 2026 is a plain, uncontested fact backed by the SFO's own statement that it did not oppose the appeals.
The Verdict
Base fact. The headline states exactly what happened, no more and no less: five named former Barclays traders, previously jailed, have had those convictions overturned. There's no loaded verb, no cherry-picked number, no buried caveat doing hidden work. The article itself supplies the context (why, and via what legal mechanism) in the body, which is the correct place for it.
What actually happened
The Court of Appeal in London quashed the convictions of five former Barclays traders, Jay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Philippe Moryoussef, Alex Pabon and Colin Bermingham, who had been jailed between 2016 and 2019 for manipulating Libor or Euribor. The cases were referred back to the court of appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission in January, and the move came after the Serious Fraud Office found their convictions "may be considered unsafe" after the supreme court ruling in the cases of Hayes and Palombo. The SFO did not contest the appeals.
Key facts
- Five former Barclays traders, Jay Vijay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Philippe Moryoussef, Alex Pabon and Colin Bermingham, had their convictions overturned by the court of appeal, having been jailed between 2016 and 2019 for manipulating Euribor or Libor.
- Nine bankers in total were given fraud convictions over rate-rigging.
- The acquittals came just over a year after the UK supreme court overturned a decade-old ruling against former UBS and Citigroup trader Tom Hayes.
- The supreme court overturned the convictions of Hayes and Palombo after finding faults in the original trials, ruling they had "deprived" them of a fair trial, and that trial judges had given "inaccurate and unfair" instructions to the juries.
- The SFO reiterated that the supreme court had "found that there was ample evidence on which a properly directed jury could have convicted Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo", and chose not to seek retrials.
What to watch for
Watch the Bittar appeal, set for the Friday after this ruling: a further attempted appeal by former Deutsche Bank trader Christian Bittar, who pleaded guilty in 2018, is the only one being contested by the SFO, which argues his conviction was safe. If that one goes the same way, the "rate-rigging prosecutions" story shifts from an isolated legal-technicality correction to a wider pattern worth a fresh headline of its own.
