Christian Bittar’s Euribor conviction overturned by Court of Appeal

Former Deutsche Bank trader Christian Bittar has had his Euribor conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal in England and Wales, the BBC reported on 9 October. The decision overturns the conviction of a man imprisoned in 2018 and adds to a series of successful appeals over benchmark interest-rate prosecutions.

Bittar watched proceedings by video link from Switzerland because he had not been granted a visa to attend court, according to the BBC. He told the broadcaster: “I have waited a very, very long time for this day.”

The latest decision follows Wednesday’s quashing of five former Barclays bankers’ convictions. Since NewsJaws reported those successful appeals, Bittar has become another trader whose conviction has been overturned.

Bittar and his family describe years of uncertainty

Speaking after the decision, Bittar told the BBC: “Finally the injustice of what I and others suffered has been recognised.” He thanked those who had stood by him and worked to correct the outcome.

The BBC’s report establishes the latest court outcome and records the family’s response. Bittar’s appeal judgment or order was not available for this report, so the detailed legal reasoning behind his particular decision remains unconfirmed here.

The Supreme Court ruling behind the wider appeals

The central legal precedent came on 23 July 2025, when the Supreme Court unanimously allowed appeals by Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo. It found that material errors in the directions given to their juries had made their convictions unsafe.

Hayes had been convicted in August 2015 and sentenced to 14 years in prison, reduced to 11 on appeal. Palombo was convicted in March 2019 and sentenced to four years. Both cases involved conspiracy-to-defraud charges concerning attempts to influence benchmark rates.

The Supreme Court judgment addressed whether taking trading advantage into account automatically made a bank’s benchmark submission dishonest. The court held that it did not: whether a submission represented the submitter’s genuine opinion was a question of fact for the jury.

Earlier directions had effectively removed that question from jurors. The judgment describes repeated unsuccessful attempts to challenge the approach before the cases reached the Supreme Court, including renewed appeals following referrals by the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2023.

The ruling also set an important limit on its conclusions. It expressly said both cases contained ample evidence on which properly directed juries could have convicted. Overturning those convictions therefore did not establish that every trading-related attempt to influence a benchmark was lawful.

Why Libor and Euribor mattered to borrowers and traders

Libor and Euribor were historically calculated using borrowing-rate assessments submitted by banks, with extreme submissions removed before the remaining figures were averaged. The Supreme Court explained that these assessments involved subjective judgment, rather than a single mechanically ascertainable figure.

The benchmarks helped determine interest on lending and the values or payments associated with derivatives. Even small movements could materially affect payments on large derivatives positions, the judgment explained. The BBC notes that the rates were used to set interest on millions of mortgages and commercial loans.

The prosecutions followed the public backlash against banks after the financial crisis began in 2008. The Libor scandal emerged publicly in 2012, when banks’ misrepresentation of their positions during the rate-setting process came to light, according to the BBC.

Other overturned convictions and the remaining appeal

On 7 October, Jay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Alex Pabon, Colin Bermingham and Philippe Mouryoussef had their convictions quashed. The BBC reports that the five former Barclays bankers launched fresh appeals after the Hayes and Palombo ruling, following approximately a decade of efforts to overturn their convictions.

The BBC puts the wider total at 19 City traders convicted between 2015 and 2019 across nine criminal trials in London and New York, with 18 now acquitted. Those multinational totals are the broadcaster’s account; they have not been independently reconstructed here from each case record.

According to the BBC, former Barclays trader Peter Johnson is the only trader in that group whose conviction remains. The court confirmed that he has applied to appeal. The report identifies him as an original whistleblower who pleaded guilty after advice that he had little prospect of winning at trial.

No decision or hearing date for Johnson’s application is established in that report. The BBC also says Hayes is seeking damages from his former employer UBS, but reports no award or settlement. Bittar’s successful appeal does not, on the information available, establish any compensation entitlement or payment.