Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Currency Probe Updates

There's been quite a bit of action on the FX side since we last updated you in June.

First up, we've had a few more settlements (mostly undisclosed, but BNP Paribas reportedly settled for $115 mm) in the investor class action, taking that total to over $1.7 billion.


Next, we've seen an interest among some of the side action litigants in combining their over-the-counter (OTC) and exchange-based claims with the existing behemoth case, In re Foreign Exchange Benchmark Rates Antitrust Litigation Case No. 1:13-cv-07789-LGS (S.D.N.Y.). (see examples here and here).

Third, we've seen reports that suggest that US law firms are setting themselves up to bring these currency cases in Europe.

Last, on the regulatory side, there have been reports that regulatory bodies are broadening the scope of their prior investigations to include other currency pairs and that German supervisory authority BaFin is (perhaps newly) concerned about the sheer scale of ForEx manipulation.  BaFin expects to conclude its investigation next year but was on record in early 2014, reportedly saying that currency rigging (and metals rigging) was worse than that of LIBOR.

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