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FCA revokes LIBOR bans: enforcement credibility and the cost of relying on criminal convictions

The FCA has revoked bans against four former traders after the Court of Appeal overturned their LIBOR and EURIBOR convictions, closing a decade-long enforcement chapter. For senior leaders, the episode exposes the fragility of regulatory action built on criminal verdicts and reshapes expectations around individual accountability.

The Financial Conduct Authority has closed one of the most high-profile enforcement chapters of the past decade. On 16 October 2026 it revoked the bans imposed on Colin Bermingham, Philippe Moryoussef, Jonathan Mathew and Christian Bittar, and removed their Final Notices from FCA channels, after the Court of Appeal overturned the criminal convictions on which those bans rested (FCA). The regulator confirmed it will take no further action against the four.

Sources

What this reveals

This episode exposes how often regulatory and internal enforcement decisions rest on borrowed evidential foundations, specifically criminal convictions, without an independent evidential base of their own. Many firms assume that acting in parallel with criminal proceedings is the safest route, but the LIBOR reversals show that when the external foundation collapses, every internal action anchored to it, dismissals, references, clawbacks, becomes exposed. Other leadership teams may wrongly believe that their HR, compliance and SMCR decisions are insulated because they followed a criminal verdict, when in fact that dependency is the vulnerability. The broader issue is dependency risk in accountability decisions: using someone else's judgement as a substitute for your own evidenced reasoning.

Questions accountable leaders should ask

  • 01For each conduct dismissal, regulatory reference or clawback issued in the last decade, can we point to an independent evidential record that would stand on its own if an underlying criminal or regulatory finding were overturned?
  • 02Where our internal findings cite external proceedings (SFO, FCA, overseas regulators) as supporting evidence, have we tested whether our conclusion would survive if those proceedings were reversed?
  • 03Do our SMCR regulatory references distinguish clearly between what we concluded on our own evidence and what we inherited from external action?
  • 04What is our process for revisiting historic conduct findings when the external basis for them changes, and who owns that process?
  • 05If an exited employee returned tomorrow with a quashed conviction and a subject access request, what would our file actually show about the independence of our reasoning?

What accountable leaders should do now

  1. 1Commission a targeted review of conduct dismissals, clawbacks and regulatory references from the benchmark-rigging era and any other cases where criminal or regulatory findings formed the evidential spine, flagging those with weak independent documentation.
  2. 2Establish a written standard requiring internal conduct decisions to record their own evidential basis separately from any parallel external proceedings, so dependency is explicit and auditable.
  3. 3Brief the board and relevant committees on the firm's specific exposure to reference and employment claims if historic external findings are further unwound, with a range of financial and reputational scenarios.
  4. 4Agree a protocol with General Counsel for how the firm will respond, proactively or reactively, if former employees whose cases rested on now-quashed convictions approach the firm.
  5. 5Build the lesson into forward-looking enforcement strategy: before anchoring any future individual accountability action to an external verdict, require sign-off that the firm's own evidence would independently support the sanction.

Explore the practical guide

This guide shows how to test whether your board's view of stakeholder priorities matches what regulators and adjacent decision-makers will actually demand during review. After reading, you will know how to structure that test, where assumptions typically break, and how to use the findings without undermining the board.

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Where internal confidence may exceed external evidence

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