LIBOR manipulation
Millions of financial transactions rely on short-term interest rates benchmarked to the London InterBank Offered Rate (referred to as LIBOR), and corporations and consumers worldwide expect to pay fair, market-value interest rates when conducting business.
In 2011, it was revealed that some of the world’s largest banks had engaged in a global conspiracy to manipulate LIBOR, allowing the banks to pay unduly low interest rates to purchasers of U.S. Dollar LIBOR-based financial instruments during the global financial crisis. As a result, the banks reaped hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in ill-gotten gains.
Action
Hausfeld is lead counsel for a class of purchasers of financial instruments that paid interest indexed to U.S. Dollar LIBOR for transactions directly with Credit Suisse, Bank of America, JP Morgan, HSBC, Barclays. Lloyds, WestLB, Westdeutsche Immobilienbank, UBS, The Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank, Citibank, Coöperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen Boerenleenbank (Rabobank), The Norinchukin Bank, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd., HBOS, and the Royal Bank of Canada.
This lawsuit was filed on the heels of worldwide investigations by at least ten different governmental regulators, including in the United States, Switzerland, Japan, United Kingdom, Canada, the European Union, and Singapore, into banks’ conduct in the setting of LIBOR. Government regulators have collected more than $8.5 billion in fines from LIBOR-setting banks.
Outcome
To date, Hausfeld has secured settlements totalling $590 million with Barclays ($120 million), Citi ($130 million), Deutsche Bank ($240 million), and HSBC ($100 million), which have received final approval from the court. The litigation is ongoing against the other defendant banks.