Foreign Exchange Antitrust

Settlement: Foreign Exchange Benchmark Rates Antitrust Litigation

Settlement Fund: $2,310,275,000.00

Case Synopsis: Class Plaintiffs allege that Defendants conspired to fix FX Benchmark Rates, as well as the spreads that Defendants quoted to them, which were allegedly discussed and agreed upon in secret communications and chat rooms. This conspiracy to fix spreads is alleged to have reduced competition in the FX market and artificially increased the spread, resulting in the Defendants buying currency at a lower rate than they sold currency, and quoted less competitive spreads than they would have. It is further alleged that Defendants also conspired to attempt to trigger clients’ stop loss and limit orders, work client limit orders at levels better than the limit order price, front-run client orders, and further fix prices by “banging the close” (i.e., breaking up large client orders into small trades immediately before and during the setting of FX Benchmark Rates), painting the screen, as well as other tactics. As a result, companies paid supra-competitive prices for FX transactions.