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Third London gold market rigging settlement brings total payments to $152 million
By Dave Simpson, Rachel O'Brien, Dean Seal, Eric Kroh, and Jon Hill
Law360, New York
Saturday, November 13, 2021
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LONDON -- Barclays Bank PLC, Scotiabank, Societe Generale, and the London Gold Market Fixing Ltd. agreed to pay $50 million to end claims that they illegally fixed prices on the gold market, the putative class of gold traders told a New York federal court Friday.
The deal, if approved, would be the third and final settlement in the putative class action and would bring the total take for the plaintiffs to $152 million, according to the gold traders' motion for preliminary approval.
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The motion also seeks certification of a class of "many thousands" who traded gold or financial instruments with gold as their underlying asset between January 2004 through June 2013.
"Studies have found that the median full-case antitrust recovery is 19% of single damages," the plaintiffs said. "Thus, co-lead counsel would have to establish at trial a recoverable single damages figure of $800 million before the combined recovery from the three proposed settlements fall behind the pace of a median antitrust recovery rate.
"Considering the risks and costs of continued litigation, both the combined result of all three settlements and this third settlement agreement even when viewed in isolation provide excellent results for the settlement class."
The March 2014 putative antitrust class action represents 18 consolidated suits claiming that several banks were involved in a wide-ranging conspiracy to fix prices on the gold market.
London Gold Market Fixing members held secret meetings to share information on the real-time price of gold to set a rate beneficial to them, including Barclays, HSBC, and Deutsche Bank, according to the suit.
The deal is the third such settlement in the class action following one in December 2016 with Deutsche Bank AG for $60 million and another in December 2020 with HSBC Bank for $42 million. UBS AG was dismissed from the suit in 2018.
HSBC provided transaction data and discovery to help the plaintiffs continue pursuing the banks remaining in the suit -- the ones that announced the settlement on Friday -- according to the agreement.
HSBC, among other banks, tried unsuccessfully to get the claims tossed, arguing in 2017 that the data analysis used by a group of investors and traders doesn't support claims of collusive trading once the flaws are corrected.
Barclays and Societe Generale got a partial win in 2019 when U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni allowed them to redact some customer data from discovery but rejected similar requests from HSBC and ScotiaBank.
The gold traders are represented by Merrill G. Davidoff, Martin I. Twersky, Michael C. Dell'Angelo, and Zachary D. Caplan of Berger & Montague PC, and Daniel L. Brockett, Sami H. Rashid, Alexee Deep Conroy, and Christopher M. Seck of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP.
Barclays is represented by Todd Fishman of Allen & Overy LLP.
SocGen is represented by Marc Gottridge of Herbert Smith Freehills New York LLP.
London Gold is represented by James Vincent Masella III of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP.
ScotiaBank is represented by Stephen Ehrenberg of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP.
The case is In re: Commodity Exchange Inc., Gold Futures and Options Trading Litigation, case number 1:14-md-02548, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
* * *
Toast to a free gold market
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Wine carrying the label of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, cases of which were awarded to three lucky donors in GATA's recent fundraising campaign, are now available for purchase by the case from Fay J Winery LLC in Texarkana, Texas. Each case has 12 bottles and the cost is $240, which includes shipping via Federal Express.
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http://www.gata.org/files/GATA-4-wine-bottles.jpg
Buyers can compose their case by choosing as many as four varietals from the list here:
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GATA will receive a commission on each case of GATA-label wine sold. So if you like wine and buy it anyway, why not buy it in a way that supports our work to achieve free and transparent markets in the monetary metals?
To order a case of GATA-label wine, please e-mail Fay J Winery at: bagman1236@aol.com
* * *
Support GATA by purchasing
Stuart Englert's "Rigged"
"Rigged" is a concise explanation of government's currency market rigging policy and extensively credits GATA's work exposing it. Ten percent of sales proceeds are contributed to GATA. Buy a copy for $14.99 through Amazon --
-- or for an additional $3 and a penny buy an autographed copy from Englert himself by contacting him at srenglert@comcast.net.
* * *
Help keep GATA going:
GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:
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* * *
Toast to a free gold market
with great GATA-label wine
Wine carrying the label of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, cases of which were awarded to three lucky donors in GATA's recent fundraising campaign, are now available for purchase by the case from Fay J Winery LLC in Texarkana, Texas. Each case has 12 bottles and the cost is $240, which includes shipping via Federal Express.
Here's what the bottles look like:
http://www.gata.org/files/GATA-4-wine-bottles.jpg
Buyers can compose their case by choosing as many as four varietals from the list here:
http://www.gata.org/files/FayJWineryVarietals.jpg
GATA will receive a commission on each case of GATA-label wine sold. So if you like wine and buy it anyway, why not buy it in a way that supports our work to achieve free and transparent markets in the monetary metals?
To order a case of GATA-label wine, please e-mail Fay J Winery at bagman1236@aol.com.
* * *
Support GATA by purchasing
Stuart Englert's "Rigged"
"Rigged" is a concise explanation of government's currency market rigging policy and extensively credits GATA's work exposing it. Ten percent of sales proceeds are contributed to GATA. Buy a copy for $14.99 through Amazon --
-- or for an additional $3 and a penny buy an autographed copy from Englert himself by contacting him at srenglert@comcast.net.
* * *
Help keep GATA going:
GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:
To contribute to GATA, please visit:
