Hagens Berman Files Class Action Against JPMorgan Chase & Co., Others Over Euribor Rate Fixing

An American investor filed a class-action lawsuit against British banking giant Barclays PLC, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc and a group of other banking defendants claiming the banks' alleged manipulation of the Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor) cost investors millions of dollars in a practice that began as early as 2005. Barclays, along with other defendant banks routinely attempted to manipulate the Euribor by making false reports to the European Banking Federation, a non-profit organization charged with setting the daily Euribor rate, which is in turn used to set interest rates for trillions of dollars of transactions each year. Euribor rates were used to set prices in a wide range of financial instruments including futures contracts, options, credit default swaps, and collateral debt obligation among others. According to the complaint, the manipulation negatively impacted any institutional investor group that participated in any transaction tied to Euribor while the defendants were manipulating the rates. The named plaintiff in the suit is a principal of an Illinois trading company involved in the purchase and sale of futures contracts, including Euribor futures contracts and was financial harmed by the alleged conspiracy to fix the Euribor rates. If approved by the court as a class action, the suit would represent all U.S.-based investors who purchased or sold Euribor-related financial instruments from January 1, 2005 through December 31, 2009.