Baseball bats, lies and Libor: The fall of a career Barclays man

Guilty: Johnson arriving for sentencing at Southwark Crown Court in London recently. – Reuters

PETER Johnson wasn’t in court during the trial of Barclays Plc traders accused of fixing Libor, yet the 61-year-old was always in the frame.

His ex-colleagues testified that he bullied them, oversaw the cheating on the desk that helped set a benchmark tied to trillions of dollars in securities, and even went so far as to punish one with a 12-inch baseball bat. The prosecutors’ case hung on Johnson, and his former co-workers tried to place the blame on him.