Summary

  • The FCA says the convictions formed the basis of its actions against Colin Bermingham, Philippe Moryoussef, Jonathan Mathew and Christian Bittar; after the Court of Appeal overturned those convictions, it revoked their bans and removed the associated Final Notices from FCA channels.
  • The regulator’s response makes the boundary between criminal judgment and administrative enforcement the central governance question: what independent case, if any, remains when the conviction that anchored a prohibition no longer stands?

In its 16 October statement, the Financial Conduct Authority announced that it had revoked four prohibitions linked to the LIBOR and EURIBOR cases. The notice is notable for what it says about the source of its authority. The FCA says it reviewed its regulatory actions because the individuals’ convictions had recently been overturned. “These convictions formed the basis” of its actions, it says; it has revoked the bans of Colin Bermingham, Philippe Moryoussef, Jonathan Mathew and Christian Bittar, removed the related Final Notices from its channels and will take no further action against them in this matter.

That is a more specific account than a regulator merely noting a change in criminal status. It describes a dependency: criminal convictions had carried into regulatory prohibitions. The FCA’s statement does not say that every underlying regulatory fact was identical to the prosecution case, or that the Court of Appeal decided every question a conduct regulator might ask. Nor does it say the defendants were found innocent of all conduct. It says the convictions on which the FCA based its action were overturned, and identifies the administrative response.

The appellate sequence matters. On 7 October the Court of Appeal quashed the convictions of five people whose trials followed the LIBOR and EURIBOR investigations, as the [Criminal Cases Review Commission reported]: Jonathan Mathew, Jay Merchant, Alex Pabon, Philippe Moryoussef and Colin Bermingham. The Criminal Cases Review Commission said jury misdirection and legal errors had undermined the safety of those convictions. In January, after the Supreme Court overturned Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo’s convictions, the Commission referred the five cases, finding no material distinction; the appeal court still had to decide whether the convictions were unsafe. Two days later the court overturned Christian Bittar’s conviction after a guilty plea. The Serious Fraud Office said it had argued for a different result in Bittar’s appeal, while respecting the court’s decision. Those are distinct routes to reversal; they should not be compressed into a claim that one ruling erased every finding across the cases.

The FCA’s history with Bittar shows why the distinction matters. Its 2018 account said an initial decision had proposed a £6.5 million penalty. After his criminal proceedings, the Upper Tribunal, with the parties’ consent, directed that the FCA not impose the penalty; the prohibition became final. The FCA’s new statement says its action rested on the conviction and that the ban is now revoked. It does not set out a fresh assessment of the evidence under a separate regulatory standard.

This is not proof that the regulator had no independent evidence. It is a public-record question created by the regulator’s own explanation. If a criminal verdict is the decisive support for an administrative restriction, then reversal forces a choice: identify a separate basis and proceed through a fresh, reviewable process, or withdraw the restriction and correct the record. The FCA has chosen the latter for these four people and says the matter is closed. It had made a similar correction for Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo in July 2025, after the Supreme Court quashed their convictions.

A regulator’s decision can serve a different purpose and apply a different standard from a criminal trial. But the two tracks cannot be treated as independent when one is expressly built on the other. Removing a Final Notice may stop a withdrawn ban from continuing to speak through the FCA’s own channels; it also makes a clear public explanation more important. The FCA has supplied the key fact of reliance and the remedy. It has not detailed how it will preserve the institutional record of that reliance or distinguish it from any evidence that might have stood on its own.