Why has the Serious Fraud Office closed its Libor manipulation investigation?

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) closed their investigation into the manipulation of Libor in October 2019, stating that it would bring no further charges. The investigation began in July 2012 and resulted in less than a 40% conviction rate and some have questioned why it was not pursued further.

Anthony Hanratty, Senior Associate in BDB Pitmans’ white collar crime and investigations team, discusses this in Law360.

‘The lack of success in securing convictions in the cases that it has chosen to bring to trial would obviously have been a factor in the decision. As would the fact that the SFO appointed a new director in late 2018, who no doubt would have been working through legacy investigations and assessing which ones she felt were worth continuing and which ones should be dropped’.

The full article is available to Law360 subscribers, here.