LIBOR Rate-Fixing Scandal Deepens As Potential Plaintiffs Consider Legal Options - Finance and Banking - United States

LIBOR Rate-Fixing Scandal Deepens As Potential Plaintiffs Consider Legal Options - Finance and Banking - United States (24 July 2012)

The defendant banks include Bank of America Corporation, Barclays Bank plc, Citibank N.A., Credit Suisse Group AG, JP Morgan Chase & Co., HSBC Holdings plc, UBS AG and various other international banks each of which were members of the U.S. LIBOR Contributor Panel. According to the plaintiffs, the defendants conspired to suppress U.S. LIBOR rates from August 2007 to May 2010 in order to enhance the return on their own trading instruments and to provide a false or misleading impression of their financial strength to investors and the rest of the market.
The putative classes include persons or entities that (a) purchased financial instruments from defendants that were indexed to the U.S. LIBOR, including but not limited to interest rate swaps; (b) transacted in Eurodollar futures contracts and options on futures contracts traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange; or (c) owned a U.S. dollar-denominated debt security on which interest was payable based on the U.S. LIBOR rate and which was designated a unique identification number by the Committee on Uniform Security Identification Procedures system. The Schwab plaintiffs, who are not seeking class action certification, allege that they purchased fixed and floating rate notes tied to the U.S. LIBOR from the defendants and unrelated third parties.