Wall Street Giants Beat Treasury Auction Rigging MDL
Dean Seal, 30 March 2021
A New York federal judge ruled Wednesday that he has yet to see any direct evidence that Wall Street banks including Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse conspired to manipulate the $14 trillion market for securities issued by the U.S. Treasury Department.
U.S. District Judge Paul G. Gardephe dismissed long-running multidistrict litigation accusing a group of banks that also included JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley of rigging auctions for Treasury Department bonds and other securities, on top of reducing competition in a secondary market for those securities.
The Treasury securities traders behind the 2015 antitrust claims have failed to put forward direct “smoking gun” evidence of the alleged schemes, such as documents showing the banks exchanged confidential customer information that could be used to coordinate their auction strategies, the judge said.
“The complaint instead relies on conclusory and undifferentiated allegations about chats and other interactions, without alleging which auction defendant shared information with another auction defendant, much less what information was shared and when it was shared,” Judge Gardephe said.
