“Banks including Bank of America Corp., Barclays Plc (BARC) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) won dismissal of antitrust lawsuits by plaintiffs claiming they were harmed by the rigging of the London interbank offered rate.
In more than two dozen interrelated cases before U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald inNew York, the banks were alleged to have conspired to depress Libor by understating their borrowing costs, thereby lowering their interest expenses on products tied to the rates.
While potential damages were estimated to be in the billions of dollars, the judge ruled the cases must be dismissed because of the inability of litigants that included brokerage Charles Schwab Corp. (SCHW), pension funds and other bondholders to show they were harmed. Buchwald, whose March 29 ruling allowed some commodities-manipulations claims to proceed to a trial, said that, while private plaintiffs must show actual harm, her ruling didn’t impede governments from pursuing antitrust claims tied to attempts to manipulate Libor.
“We recognize that it might be unexpected that we are dismissing a substantial portion of plaintiffs’ claims, given that several of the defendants here have already paid penalties to government regulatory agencies reaching into the billions of dollars,” Buchwald wrote. “There are many requirements that private plaintiffs must satisfy but which government agencies need not.”
