The Court of Appeal in London has quashed the convictions of five former Barclays traders jailed for rigging interest rates, bringing an end to their long battle to clear their names.

The five men — Jay Vijay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Philippe Moryoussef, Alex Pabon and Colin Bermingham — all worked at Barclays. They had been convicted over the manipulation of LIBOR, the benchmark interest rate at the centre of one of the biggest scandals to hit the City of London.

The acquittals come a year after the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of City trader Tom Hayes, a landmark ruling that reshaped the legal foundation underpinning the LIBOR prosecutions.

Who did the court clear?

The Court of Appeal overturned the convictions of:

• Jay Vijay Merchant
• Jonathan Mathew
• Philippe Moryoussef
• Alex Pabon
• Colin Bermingham

All five had been jailed following prosecutions arising from the manipulation of interest rate benchmarks while they worked at Barclays.

What does the ruling change?

The decision marks a further collapse of the criminal legacy of the LIBOR scandal. The Supreme Court's ruling in the Hayes case a year earlier had already dismantled the legal reasoning on which the original prosecutions rested. The Court of Appeal's latest decision extends that correction to the remaining convicted traders.

For the five men, the judgment restores their good names after what their supporters described as a long fight to overturn sentences they had always contested. For practitioners, the outcome signals that the doctrinal basis advanced by prosecutors in the LIBOR trials no longer withstands appellate scrutiny in England and Wales.

The rulings also raise questions about how future benchmark-manipulation cases will be prosecuted, and whether the state will pursue further appeals or reviews in related matters.

What comes next?

Attention now turns to the consequences of the quashed convictions. The five former traders had spent years pursuing appeals following their imprisonment. Their acquittals follow the same appellate path that cleared Tom Hayes, whose case set the precedent for the current wave of overturned verdicts.

The decisions close a chapter on criminal prosecutions that once stood as among the most significant market-manipulation cases brought in the UK.