US: HSBC agrees to pay US$100m to settle US antitrust suit

HSBC has agreed to pay US$100 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit by over-the-counter investors in the United States, including the city of Baltimoreand Yale University, who claimed they were harmed when they bought securities tied to rigged Libor.

The settlement will need to be approved by a federal judge in Manhattan.

The investors said in their request for preliminary approval on Thursday, March 29, that the deal was substantially fair given the hurdles they would face to get a favorable jury verdict in the six-year-old case that’s currently before an appeals court.

“This litigation presents the court, the parties, and eventually, a jury, with the task of understanding extremely complex derivative instruments in an opaque, unregulated market,” according to the court filing. “This makes proving liability and damages, both of which would have required the assistance of experts, all the more risky.”

About a dozen firms have paid almost US$9 billion in fines to resolve government investigations around the world into rigging of the key benchmark. Libor is used to set interest rates every business day for myriad financial instruments.

Full Content: Bloomberg

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