Judge Sidney H. Stein signed off tentatively on the pacts, which call for payments of $13.75 million by Credit Suisse, $13 million by Deutsche Bank, and $21 million by NatWest. The lawsuit accused them of rigging the franc Libor, used to set interest rates for transactions involving Switzerland’s currency.
The case is part of a wave of cartel litigation stretching back more than a decade that takes aim at overlapping schemes by the world’s top financial institutions to manipulate the critical interest rate benchmarks powering global banking and trade.
Many of the cases have focused on versions of the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, a longtime centerpiece of world commerce. The benchmark has been gradually phased out since late 2021—largely over fallout from the rate rigging scandal—but the transition has been messy.
The banks have paid billions in total to make the allegations go away—at times in nine-figure chunks, at others in increments of a few million dollars. Some recent or ongoing cases focus on benchmarks involving the currencies of Singapore, Japan, and Australia.
A similar roster of financial firms has also paid huge sums in the past few years to resolve similar claims in slightly different contexts, such as allegations that they rigged major bond markets worth trillions of dollars or colluded on the trading price of gold, silver, aluminum, and other commodities.
Stein, writing in a trio of virtually identical rulings Wednesday, said the pacts with Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, and NatWest fell “within the range of reasonableness, fairness, and adequacy.” He set a final settlement approval hearing for Aug. 1 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The judge previously gave preliminary approval to a $22 million deal with
Affiliates of
The case is Sonterra Capital Master Fund Ltd. v. Credit Suisse Grp. AG, S.D.N.Y., No. 15-cv-871, 2/15/23.
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