DID YOU HAVE A 401K WITH A MAJOR BANKING INSTITUTION?
If you are a current employee or former employee of one of the following banks and held a 401(k) account, you may have been impacted by a major antitrust price-fixing scheme to rig the market for securities sold by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
If you are a current employee or former employee of one of the following banks and held a 401(k) account, you may have been impacted by a major antitrust price-fixing scheme to rig the market for securities sold by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
- Bank of America
- Barclays
- BNP
- Citigroup
- Credit Suisse
- Goldman Sachs
- JPMorgan Chase
- Morgan Stanley
- Royal Bank of Scottland (RBS)
- UBS
If you are currently enrolled or were enrolled in a 401(k) plan with one of these banks, please reach out immediately. Only a few months remain to file these cases, as the statute of limitations is quickly approaching.
Please contact that Securities attorneys of Peiffer Wolf Carr & Kane by calling 504-523-2434 or by filling out a Contact Form for a FREE Consultation. Also, you can reach out directly to the Managing Shareholder, Joseph C. Peiffer, by emailing him at [email protected] today.
TREASURY SECURITIES PRICE-FIXING INVESTIGATION
The treasury securities price-fixing cases commenced in late July 2015. The cases allege that the biggest Wall Street banks conspired to rig the $13 trillion market for securities sold by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
In the litigation, the majority of plaintiffs consist of public pension funds. They allege that the banks routinely shared sensitive client information with each other in chat rooms, allowing them to profit at their clients’ expense. The consolidated treasuries complaint details how the banks shared amongst themselves information related to clients’ orders for bids on the securities ahead of Treasury auctions.
They then allegedly used this information to trade ahead of their clients’ orders to obtain better prices for themselves. The banks “did not tell customers that their bidding information was being shared as part of a bid-rigging conspiracy to benefit themselves to the detriment of their customers,” the complaint says. The banks profited from the cartel scheme by using the information to lower the prices of securities that they bought in auctions and then raise the prices at which they sold them to clients.
BIGGEST WALL STREET BANKS CONSPIRACY INVESTIGATION
Based on our experience, we believe that this could be one of the largest antitrust cases ever. The sweeping allegations are more than just alarming, they are reprehensible. If you work or have worked at one of the listed major wall street banks and held or hold a 401(k), Contact Peiffer Wolf Carr & Kane immediately for a FREE Consultation.
This is the Oldest Form of Antitrust Conspiracy
One of the co-lead counsel in the treasuries cases noted that the auction price tampering that the plaintiffs allege in the Treasury securities case is more straightforward than the alleged cartel behavior in the other capital markets cases. “This is not a benchmark case like LIBOR,” he said. “This is the oldest form of antitrust conspiracy in the world – basic collusion at auction to push down prices.”
The recently filed treasuries complaint also outlines an alleged scheme by a subset of seven banks, including JPMorgan, Citigroup, UBS and Goldman Sachs, to thwart competition in the bidding process in the U.S. Treasury market by blocking their clients’ access to electronic trading platforms where better prices were available. The complaint alleges that seven banks colluded through a trading platform called Tradeweb to block the plaintiffs from trading on platforms where better prices could be obtained.
Tradeweb is owned by a consortium of the seven banks named as defendants. Through Tradeweb, the banks allegedly tried to enforce a two-tiered marketplace in which the big banks, or dealers, could obtain lower prices on some trading systems known as interdealer platforms, and nonbank investors, including the plaintiffs, were relegated to other trading platforms where prices tend to be higher.
The banks allegedly pressured some interdealer platforms not to allow the nonbank investors to use those platforms by threatening to boycott the systems, which would have a significant financial impact on the platforms.
FREE CONSULTATION | 504-523-2434
Please contact that Securities attorneys of Peiffer Wolf Carr & Kane by calling 504-523-2434 or by filling out a Contact Form for a FREE Consultation. Also, you can reach out directly to the Managing Shareholder, Joseph C. Peiffer, by emailing him at [email protected] today.
ANTITRUST PRACTICE IN THE NEWS
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