UPDATE 1-Former Deutsche Bank manager acquitted in London over Euribor rigging

A former Deutsche Bank manager, who was extradited to Britain from Italy to face criminal charges that he had helped to manipulate global Euribor interest rates, has been cleared by a London jury, the British prosecutor said on Thursday. Andreas Hauschild, who ran the German bank's Frankfurt team responsible for rate submissions, was acquitted by a jury at Southwark Crown Court, a spokeswoman for the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) prosecutor said.

The case was the seventh rate-rigging prosecution brought by the SFO after a seven-year criminal investigation. Prosecutors alleged the German national had conspired to defraud by dishonestly manipulating Euribor (the euro interbank offered rate) - a benchmark that helps determine rates on an estimated $150 trillion to $180 trillion of financial contracts and loans worldwide - between January 2005 and December 2009.

The acquittal of the 54-year-old, who had declined to appear in a London court to be formally charged in 2016, follows the conviction of four other former bankers on similar charges, including former Deutsche Bank star trader Christian Bittar and ex Barclays trader Phillipe Moryoussef. The SFO secured a European Arrest Warrant for Hauschild in 2016 and he was later arrested in Italy and brought to Britain.

Euribor, like its Libor (London interbank offered rate) counterpart, is designed to reflect the cost of borrowing between banks and is set after submitters at a panel of major banks report their estimated costs of borrowing over various periods to an administrator, who calculates an average.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)