By Kirstin Ridley
LONDON (Reuters) - Tom Hayes, the British trader on trial in London on Libor interest rate rigging charges, just wanted to do a "really good job", according to evidence presented to a London court on Wednesday.
The former UBS (VX:UBSG) and Citigroup (N:C) yen derivatives trader is charged by Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) with eight counts of conspiracy to defraud between August 2006 and September 2010, a criminal offence that carries a maximum jail sentence of 10 years.
In transcripts of a 2013 interview with SFO investigators, Hayes was quoted as saying: "My primary driver in everything that I did was about doing a really good job."
Hayes, 35, has pleaded not guilty and is expected to lay out his defence later in a trial scheduled to last well into August.
The SFO alleges Hayes was a central figure in a conspiracy with 25 staff from at least 10 banks and brokerages to rig Libor, the London interbank offered rate that is used to price an estimated $450 trillion of financial contracts from derivatives to loans for households and individuals worldwide.
According to evidence presented by the prosecution, Hayes told investigators that in the frenetic world of trading, he could sometimes secure seven or eight trades in less than 30 seconds from his desk in Tokyo, which had eight screens, two keyboards and "voice boxes everywhere".
AGGRESSIVE ATMOSPHERE
But it was an aggressive atmosphere with stand-up shouting matches on the trading floor, the court heard. Hayes singled out UBS colleague Roger Darin as someone with whom he competed and had a difficult relationship - at best ambivalent and at worst "seething hatred", according to the transcripts.
Darin, who is Swiss and now lives in Switzerland, has been charged as part of a U.S. investigation in Libor manipulation.
Hayes, who has been diagnosed with mild Asperger Syndrome - a mild form of autism - was promoted by UBS in March, 2009, but went out of his way to avoid managing people.
"People are variables that don't behave in predictable ways...I'd rather manage risk than people," he told investigators, according to the transcripts.
Hayes, described by prosecutors as highly intelligent, also said in a series of interviews with the SFO after his arrest in December 2012 that he could make or lose $10 million in a day because of the size of his trading positions.
The effect of Libor rates on his trades was relatively small, he said according to the transcripts and summaries, which were read out to the jury and shown on court room screens. But he was driven to always try to gain an "extra edge".
"I've always described Libors as the cherry on top of the cake. It was like squeezing out that extra little bit of value," he said, according to the SFO transcripts.
Hayes, who prosecutors say tried to influence rates designed to reflect interbank borrowing costs for his own trading benefit, said he was only reprimanded by UBS once during a review for shouting at brokers.
Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs tried unsuccessfully to poach him in 2008 with a $3 million signing-on bonus. Hayes told investigators he thought Goldman was too good for him and he lacked the self confidence at the time to switch jobs, the court was told by the prosecution.