Specialist Lawyer Comments On Decision

City trader Tom Hayes has today been found guilty in a landmark case of rigging Libor rates.

Mr Hayes was jailed for 14 years after being convicted of conspiracy to defraud - the first time an individual has been found guilty of rigging the interbank lending rate.

Libor is used as the basis for hundreds of trillions of dollars of loans and transactions around the world from complex derivatives to mortgages.

It is a benchmark that indicates the interest rate that banks charge when lending to each other.

During the trial at London's Southwark Crown Court, Tom Hayes was accused of interfering with the rate in order to boost his own earnings.

Mr Hayes initially confessed to the manipulation but later changed his plea to deny all eight counts of fraud.

Following the judgment today in which the trader was found guilty, Sarah Wallace, Partner and Head of Regulatory & Criminal Group at Irwin Mitchell in London, said: