Banks Ordered to Defend Suit Claiming Benchmark Rate Rigging
- Suit by Alaska pension fund can proceed to trial, judge rules
- Bank of America, Barclays accused of rigging ISDAfix rate
Buildings stand on Wall Street near the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., on Monday, Feb. 22, 2016. Stocks retreated with government bonds, while the euro rallied to the highest level in almost a month as investors looked past an unprecedented boost from European monetary policy to focus on rising anxiety that policymakers have lost the ability to jumpstart global growth and stave off deflation.
Photographer: John Taggart/BloombergBank of America Corp., Barclays Plc and a dozen more banks must face investor claims that they rigged a benchmark used in the sales of interest-rate derivatives and other financial instruments.
U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan Monday rebuffed the banks’ request to throw out antitrust lawsuits accusing the institutions of colluding to set ISDAfix, affecting trillions of dollars of financial instruments. The rate is used to set prices on interest-rate swap transactions, commercial real-estate mortgages and other securities.