Settlements worth US$95.5 million resolving claims that Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and HSBC Holdings conspired to rig the multi trillion-dollar market for bonds backed by foreign governments and multinational institutions were approved by a federal judge in Manhattan, reported Bloomberg Law.
Judge Edgardo Ramos gave his blessing to the trio of agreements negotiated between 2017 and 2019, which call for Deutsche Bank to pay US$48.5 million, HSBC to pay US$30 million, and BofA to pay US$17 million. The deal resolves part of a sprawling antitrust case against some of the world’s top banks.
It was “honestly negotiated by counsel with significant experience litigating antitrust class actions,” Ramos wrote on April 2. “Success in complex cases such as this one is inherently uncertain, and there is no guarantee that continued litigation would yield a superior result.”
He also awarded US$23.9 million in fees and US$4.6 million in expenses to Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, which are co-lead counsel for the pension funds behind the case. The fee figure represents one-quarter of the total settlement value.
The multidistrict lawsuit, consolidated in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, accuses the banks of manipulating the US$9 trillion to US$15 trillion market for “supranational, sub-sovereign, and agency” bonds, or SSA bonds.
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