Former UBS and Citigroup banker Tom Hayes was one of the few people convicted of crimes and sentenced to prison for trading activities leading up to the Great Financial Crisis. His conviction was overturned last week by the U.K. Supreme Court.
Hayes told Fortune the news took days to sink in—even though he was notified about the decision a day in advance.
“It was actually like 24 hours of anxiety, just like ridiculous anxiety, like ‘Are they going to change their mind? Are they going to change the ruling? Is something going to change,” he said. “Then, obviously, once the ruling came out, bang, like, I just got very busy, very quickly.”
In Hayes’ case, a U.K. court found he manipulated a key interest rate used by banks as a benchmark that set costs for hundreds of millions of dollars of loans and mortgages worldwide. The “manipulation” was that Hayes and colleagues at other banks would discuss the range of interest rates at which their banks were willing to lend money to each other (the “London Inter-Bank Offered Rate” of interest, or Libor), and then Hayes would select a rate inside that range that was most advantageous to his bank.
During the trial, prosecutors argued Hayes was the mastermind of a global operation to fix the now-defunct Libor, which underpinned everything from student loans to derivatives. Prosecutors argued Hayes led a network of traders and brokers to submit information that benefited his trades and earned illicit profits for himself and his employer.
In his defense, Hayes argued that the way he set rates was considered a routine part of doing business, and that no one in banking—especially his bosses—thought it was illegal.
A jury found that choosing an advantageous Libor rate was corruptly self-serving, and Hayes, now 45, was sent to prison.
But, after a decade-long insistence on his innocence, Hayes was vindicated last week when his conviction was overturned. The court said the judge in Hayes’ trial misdirected the jury in a way that “undermined the fairness of the trial.” Yet, it did not fully absolve him, as the justices allowed that there was “ample evidence” in the course of Hayes’ trial that could’ve led to a conviction. The Supreme Court did not comment on the actions of the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO), which prosecuted Hayes.
Tom Hayes (right) poses on July 23 with Carlo Palombo, a former Barclays exec whose conviction for rigging Euribor was also overturned by the U.K. Supreme Court.Courtesy of Sian Harrison
Hayes disagrees with the Supreme Court’s “ample evidence” claim. He argues that if the SFO, which investigates financial crimes, would have chosen to retry his case, if this were true. The SFO said it did not move to retry Hayes because it determined seeking a retrial would “not be in the public interest.”
“If I’d been retried, I would have actually relished that, because I probably would have won,” he told Fortune.
The SFO declined to comment to Fortune beyond what it said in a public statement.
Although 19 other bankers were also convicted in the U.K. and U.S. for the LIBOR scandal, Hayes’ 14-year prison sentence was among the harshest. He served just over five years in prison (his sentence was reduced to 11 years on appeal) and another four years on probation.
Hayes’ conviction was overturned on July 23 but it wasn’t until July 26 that the ruling hit home, he said.
That was the day he opened a letter from his sister. She wrote him a letter nearly every week, if not more often, while he was in prison, said Hayes. Following the decision on his conviction, he said, she sent one more.
“The last letter, she called it. She just said, you know, ‘I thought that I should write to you this one last time using pen and paper,’” he said. “The last paragraph of it was, ‘I’m so proud of you, Tom. Here’s to never writing you a letter ever again. The end of an era. And what an end.’”
Tom Hayes: scapegoat
Hayes usually prefers to avoid attention. On the London Underground, he likes to shuffle into a corner and look at his phone to avoid being recognized, he said. Walking around town, his eyes are always fixed on his feet.
Despite his discomfort, the former star yen derivatives trader for UBS and Citigroup has become globally recognized, some might say, as a fall guy for the Libor scandal, which involved myriad actors, including bankers, banks, and even world governments.
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Hayes said the public’s yearning for a scapegoat played into his conviction as well. Getting a fair shake was impossible, he said, at a time when governments and the media were looking to hold bankers to account following the Great Financial Crisis.
In Hayes’ view, he and his fellow bankers were unfairly targeted for engaging in routine business practices that, at the time, everyone thought were legal. Among those prosecuted was Carlo Palombo, a former Barclays exec, whose conviction for rigging another benchmark rate, Euribor, was also overturned last week by the U.K. Supreme Court.
“Eric Holder gave a live press conference charging me when I’d never even been spoken to by the DOJ. I had nothing to do with America, and I got charged with the same offense at the same time in the U.K. Not even terrorists get that,” he said.
The SFO, which, besides Hayes, also successfully prosecuted another nine people for rigging rates, is at conflict with itself because of its mandate both to investigate and prosecute, said Hayes. In his case, the SFO’s reliance on an investigation by the outside counsel of his former employer, UBS, was also problematic, he claimed.
“There’s a very dark side to the relationship between third-party law firms acting for banks who are suspects and being paid hundreds of millions by those banks or corporates who are suspects and acting in their interests, and their relationship with prosecutors and regulators and that hand-in-glove approach where you know, they all have sort of a similar goal,” he said.
In prison, Hayes ran into inmates who couldn’t believe he was given such a lengthy sentence for fraud and assumed he was either a pedophile or an undercover police officer. In prison, he shied away from conflict, and was only “throttled” once he said, though the altercation ended quickly. Contrary to common belief, Hayes felt safer in the high-security prison, which was less unruly because “the real guys don’t even got nothing to prove.”
Looking to the future
Hayes maintained that he’s no longer constantly angry for the time he spent in prison or at the judge who oversaw his trial. During his time in confinement, he became a Christian, he said, and learned to forgive. His conviction being overturned last week has also helped keep the “weeds” of his repressed rage from sprouting up again, he said.
“Interestingly, I felt those weeds have not been appearing quite so much since Wednesday. So definitely, I think whatever happened on Wednesday is helping me with that.”
Looking to the future is difficult. Despite—or perhaps because of—being on probation, he hasn’t felt free for years. He’s undecided on whether he’ll return to finance, even as the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority dropped his lifetime ban Friday, Bloomberg reported.
One thing he does know is he feels a responsibility to speak out for other convicted bankers who were sentenced for similar charges, despite his wish to live anonymously. At least four convicted bankers have already said they will appeal their convictions following the Supreme Court’s decision on Hayes’ case this week, the Financial Times reported.
For now, though, Hayes is ready for a break. After a week of interviews, he enjoyed a weekend away with his father and 13-year-old son in St Ives, a small coastal town in Cornwall, in the southwest of England. In the future, he wants to live by the sea and buy a dog, he said.
Hayes, who at the pinnacle of his career was bringing in a multi-million-dollar salary with incentives, is now focused on the things he used to take advantage of, and he said the rest of the world should too.
“Don’t take your freedom for granted. Don’t take all the things that are amazing in your life for granted,” he said. “Don’t get obsessed about just trying to acquire more stuff and thinking this is a good way of measuring your quality of life, because it really isn’t.”
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