Facts

Plaintiff investors filed an antitrust class action on behalf of a class of buy-side investors against twelve banks, including Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, RBS, and UBS, as well as two financial market service providers, ISDA and Markit, concerning defendants' alleged anticompetitive activity in the market for credit default swaps.

PLAINTIFFS' CONTENTIONS:
Defendants allegedly conspired to prevent credit default swaps from being traded on exchanges, thereby enabling the bank defendants to unlawfully perpetuate their privileged positions as the sole market makers for credit default swaps, stifle price transparency, and restrain competition in the market. As a result, the bank defendants were able maintain hyper-inflated bid/ask spreads on credit default swaps, enabling them to cheat class members out of billions dollars. Plaintiffs asserted claims for conspiracy to restrain trade in violation of Section 1 the Sherman Act, conspiracy to monopolize in violation of Section 2 of the Act, and unjust enrichment.

DEFENDANTS' CONTENTIONS:
Defendants moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim for relief.

Result

The district court largely denied defendants' motion to dismiss, dismissing only the claim brought under Section 2 of the Sherman Act and claims based on investments entered prior to the fall of 2008. Following extensive discovery and numerous mediation sessions conducted by the Hon. Daniel Weinstein, ret., defendants agreed to pay $1,864,650,000 to settle the claims, which will be distributed to class members through a claims administration process.

Other Information

FILING DATE: Oct. 22, 2013.