A trader who worked for UBS and Citigroup has become the first person to be convicted by a jury in Britain of rigging the benchmark Libor inter-bank lending rate.

Tom Hayes, 35, was on Monday found guilty following a trial at London's Southwark Crown Court.

Hayes had denied eight counts of conspiracy to defraud between 2006 and 2010, when he worked for Swiss bank UBS and its US rival Citigroup.

Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) alleged he was the leader of more than a dozen traders who worked to rig the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor).

Libor, an estimate of the average interest rate for banks borrowing from other banks, is a key reference for many financial products around the world, from consumer loans to savings accounts.