Tom Hayes 'offered a humongous deal' to fix Libor

The trader at the centre of the Libor rate-rigging trial offered his contact a "humongous deal" to keep the rate low, Southwark Crown Court has heard.

Tom Hayes promised to pay the broker up to $100,000 to keep the Libor rate "as low as possible", jurors were told.

The court heard that, in a telephone call in 2008, Mr Hayes said: "If you keep fixes unchanged, I'll do a humongous deal with you.

"I'll, of course, support and pay you... $50,000, $100,000."

Mr Hayes, 35, a former UBS and Citigroup trader, is facing eight counts of conspiracy to defraud.

He denies the charges.

Mr Hayes faced similar allegations on Wednesday. The court heard that he discussed manipulating the Libor rate with Will Hall, a trader at RBS, in February 2007.

Mr Hayes said: "Three-month Libor is too high, 'cos I've kept it artificially high."

He said he had managed to do this by "being mates with the cash desks - [JP Morgan] Chase and I always help each other out".

Mr Hayes became an "increasingly dominant force" within his market by May 2008, Mukul Chawla QC told the jury.

Goldman Sachs offered Mr Hayes a guaranteed $3.2m for the year to join the bank, according to an email sent by UBS's head of European trades Sascha Prinz in 2008.

He refused Goldman Sachs' offer after UBS increased his pay.

Mr Hayes left UBS in September 2009 to join Citigroup, where he earned about $3.5m over nine months.

Libor - the London Interbank Offered Rate - is an interest rate used by banks around the world to set the price of financial products worth trillions of pounds.

Mr Hayes, from Fleet, Hampshire, was first arrested in 2012 before being formally charged in June 2013 with eight counts of conspiracy to defraud over the period 2006 to 2010.

The trial continues at Southwark Crown Court in London.