Barclays traders' fraud convictions quashed by Court of Appeal, with SFO ruling out retrials

From the Newshound archive · first published 7 October 2026 · last updated 8 October 2026.

Five former Barclays traders had their rate-rigging fraud convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal on Wednesday, after judges found that jury directions in their original trials were fatally flawed. The Serious Fraud Office, which launched the prosecutions more than ten years ago, raised no objection to the appeals and has now ruled out seeking a retrial against any of the five men. The rulings follow the Supreme Court's landmark decision last year to clear Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, whose trial directions the five men's lawyers showed were near-identical to their own.

A tearful Colin Bermingham, 70, said outside court: 'It's hard to take in — you don't believe it until you hear it.'

Jonathan Mathew said carrying a criminal conviction for ten years was 'a burden every minute of every day' and called it 'an injustice that never should have happened.'

The collapse of all five convictions marks a further unravelling of the SFO's most prominent post-financial-crisis prosecutions, with Deutsche Bank trader Christian Bittar's appeal still pending.