By Kirstin Ridley
LONDON (Reuters) - A former New Zealand-based ICAP (L:IAP) broker, charged with manipulating Libor benchmark interest rates, told a London court on Wednesday he had passed on requests to influence rates to his London colleagues from convicted trader Tom Hayes "for safety".
Darrell Read, the first of six brokers to give evidence for the defence against charges they were part of a criminal conspiracy with Hayes and others to rig yen-denominated Libor, said the information was helpful market insight for his colleagues - and useful if they needed to appease Hayes.
"If Tom's happy, that makes my life easier," Read told the jury on the second day of the defence in a 12-week trial at Southwark Crown Court.
Read, 50, is charged with two counts of conspiracy to defraud with Hayes and others by rigging Libor, a benchmark that underpins $450 trillion of financial contracts worldwide, between 2006 and 2010 for a commercial advantage.
Read, who has told the court that Hayes was a key client, said he often lied to Hayes about having persuaded others to move rates in the direction Hayes was asking.
Read also denied that ICAP's daily predictions of London interbank offered rates - known as "run throughs" and sent to banks that helped set Libor - favoured Hayes's requests or reflected anything other than the honest opinion of former ICAP colleague Colin Goodman, nicknamed internally "Lord Libor".
Read's lawyer Henry Blaxland showed the jury data on computer screens that showed ICAP's "run throughs" did not always reflect Hayes's wishes.
"Through all of these examples - once again he's (Goodman) high and Tom's low," Read told the jury, referring to the differences between ICAP's Libor prediction and Hayes's request.
Hayes, a former yen derivatives trader at UBS Group AG and Citigroup Inc (N:C), was convicted in August of manipulating Libor and sentenced to 14 years in jail - the first conviction in an eight-year global inquiry into whether traders fixed benchmark rates such as Libor.
He is appealing against his conviction and sentence.