Two former City traders will have their cases heard before the Supreme Court this week over their criminal convictions for interest-rate rigging.

Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo’s convictions were referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Case Review Commission in 2023 following the US Court of Appeal decision in Connolly and Black, clearing two other traders convicted in 2022. Outstanding charges against Hayes in the US were also dropped.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeals last year on all grounds and, though permission to appeal was denied, appeal judges certified that their decision involved a point of law of general public importance relating to the proper construction of the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and Euro Interbank Offered Rate (EURIBOR) definitions.

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LIBOR, which was phased out in 2023, and EURIBOR are benchmark interest rates for short-term loans between major banks. The rates are calculated daily from submissions by a panel of major banks.

Hayes, 44 a former securities trader at UBS and Citigroup, was convicted in 2015 of multiple charges of conspiracy to defraud in relation to manipulations of the LIBOR. He was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment, later reduced to 11 years. He has always maintained his innocence.

Palombo, 45, was convicted of conspiracy to defraud by rigging the EURIBOR benchmark interest rate between 2005 and 2009.  He was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment following a 2019 trial at Southwark Crown Court.

The Supreme Court hearing is listed for three days before Lord Reed, Lord Hodge, Lord Lloyd-Jones, Lord Leggatt and Lady Simler.

It will make findings on two issues: first, whether a LIBOR or EURIBOR submission is automatically dishonest if it is influenced by a trading advantage and secondly whether a LIBOR or EURIBOR submission must be at the single cheapest rate available at the time of the submissions or whether it can be selected from a range of potential borrowing rates.