NEW YORK, May 18, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Labaton Sucharow LLP and Hausfeld LLP, on behalf of Boston Retirement System, jointly filed today the first nationwide class action alleging a global conspiracy between 2005 and 2014 to manipulate trading in supranational, sub-sovereign, and agency bonds (SSA bonds). Named defendants include some of the world’s largest dealer banks—Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Crédit Agricole, and Nomura International. SSA bonds are debt instruments issued by a sovereign country’s political subdivisions and administrative bodies used to fund critical government operations.
Gregory Asciolla, Co-Chair of Labaton Sucharow’s Antitrust and Competition Litigation Practice, remarked, “Once again many of the same global banks implicated in numerous other price-fixing conspiracies of complex financial products are up to their same old tricks in the $9 trillion SSA bond market. Similar to allegations in the LIBOR and foreign exchange antitrust price-fixing cases, the banks agreed to fix prices for SSA bonds by various means, including exchanging confidential customer information, trading habits, and order sizes via electronic chatrooms, where traders were able to both hide and police their conspiracy.”
The plaintiff alleges that traders at the dealer banks exchanged confidential information about their customers’ identities, trading habits, and order sizes, which enabled them to collude to fix bid and ask spreads offered to customers in the secondary market—most of which are state and local governments, institutional and individual investors, pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, and insurance companies.
The defendants’ conduct in the SSA bond market has also caught the attention of antitrust enforcement agencies worldwide. In December 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into London-based traders of SSA bonds. Additional probes by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and the European Commission soon followed.
About Labaton Sucharow LLP
Labaton Sucharow prosecutes precedent-setting class actions, recovering billions of dollars on behalf of defrauded consumers and investors. The Firm’s successful reputation is built not only on its team of more than 60 attorneys, but also on its industry-leading in-house investigators, financial analysts, and forensic accountants. The Firm litigates in the areas of antitrust, consumer protection, and securities law. For more information, visit www.labaton.com.
About Hausfeld LLP
Hausfeld is a leading global law firm with offices in Berlin, Brussels, London, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. The Firm has a broad range of complex litigation experience, particularly in antitrust/competition, financial services, and consumer protection. Hausfeld aims to achieve the best possible results for clients through its practical and commercial approach, avoiding litigation where feasible, yet litigating robustly when necessary. For more information about the Firm, including recent trial victories and landmark settlements, please visit www.hausfeld.com.