Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase Among Banks Sued by Danish Pension Funds in Credit Default Swaps Lawsuit

In U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Danish pension funds (and their investment manager) Unipension Fondsmaeglerselskab, MP Pension-Pensionskassen for Magistre & Psykologer, Arkitekternes Pensionskasse, and Pensionskassen for Jordbrugsakademikere & Dyrlaeger are suing 12 banks accusing them of conspiring to take charge of access and pricing in the credit derivatives markets. They are claiming antitrust violations while contending that the defendants acted unreasonably to hold back competitors in the credit default swaps market.

The funds believe that the harm suffered by investors as a result was “tens of billions of dollars” worth. They want monetary damages and injunctive relief.

According to the Danish pension funds’ credit default swaps case, the defendants inflated profits by taking control of intellectual property rights in the CDS market, blocking would-be exchanges’ entry, and limiting client access to credit-default-swaps prices, and

This securities case comes four years after the US Justice Department acknowledged that it had begun an investigation into possible anticompetitive activities involving credit derivatives clearing, and trading (a probe that is ongoing) and just a few months after the Sheet Metal Workers Local No. 33 Cleveland District Pension Plan sued the banks, Markit, and ISDA also for allegedly taking control of the CDS market, which it says resulted in customers being overcharged some $7 billion annually. The plaintiff contends that there may be billions of dollars in damages and it wants treble damages. Last month, it was the European Commission’s turn to claim that 13 banks, ISDA, and Markit worked together to stop CDSs from being able to trade on open exchanges.

If you think you may have been the victim of securities fraud involving credit default swaps, you should speak with one of our experienced CDS fraud lawyers today.

There are over a dozen defendants in the Danish pension funds’ CDS fraud case including:

• J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM)
• Citigroup Inc. (C)
• Morgan Stanley (MS)
• Bank of America Corp. (BAC)
• Credit Suisse Group AG (CS)
• Deutsche Bank AG (DB)
• UBS AG (UBS)
• Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (RBS)
• Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)
• Markit Group Ltd, a financial data provider
• International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA)

Pensions Sue Banks Over Credit-Default Swaps, Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2013

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