Forex-Rigging Settlements Yield $300M for Class Counsel

Class counsel will take home $300 million from settlements over an alleged conspiracy among banks to fix prices in the foreign exchange market, a federal court ruled Nov. 8.

A reasonable baseline for attorneys’ fees for an antitrust class action of this size is 13 percent of the settlement fund, Judge Lorna G. Schofield wrote for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The fund totals $2.3 billion, comprised of 15 settlements approved in August with banks including Bank of America, JP Morgan, and Citibank. The settlement is the third largest antitrust class action settlement in history, according to plaintiffs.

The $300 million award will be divided among the 369 attorneys listed as class counsel.

The attorneys requested $381 million, 16.51 percent of the fund.

Megafund cases warrant a “sliding scale” approach to attorneys’ fees, awarding a smaller percentage for fees as the size of the settlement fund increases, the court said.

Credit Suisse is the only defendant that hasn’t settled.

The case is In re Foreign Exch. Benchmark Rates Antitrust Litig., 2018 BL 413075, S.D.N.Y., No. 13-7789, 11/8/18.