Citi, Barclays Beat Sovereign Bond Manipulation Claims on Appeal
Mike Leonard, 19 July 2021
Citigroup Inc., Barclays Plc, and other top banks got a federal appeals court in Manhattan on Monday to uphold their win against antitrust claims over an alleged scheme to rig the multitrillion-dollar market for bonds backed by foreign governments and multinational institutions.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a pair of rulings by Judge Edgardo Ramos, who previously dismissed allegations that the banks manipulated the $9 trillion to $15 trillion market for “supranational, sub-sovereign, and agency” bonds, or SSA bonds.
Allegations of currency-trade manipulation are bubbling up into a potential class-action suit against several big banks, according to a report from the Financial Times.
The previous eight banks Banned After promising “integrity” and providing evidence of “remedial measures” after historical violations of antitrust rules, the bond sales of the EU’s 800 billion euro recovery fund have been approved to process future transactions.
As part of its 800 billion euro recovery fund, the European Union has excluded the 10 most hit banks in the debt market from lucrative bond sales because they have historically violated antitrust rules.
Negotiations between banks to create a permanent, central pot of money to refund scam victims have collapsed.
Britain’s NatWest would move its headquarters out of Scotland in the event of a vote in favour of independence, its CEO Alison Rose said, only days before parliamentary elections there.
Unlike the devastating London Whale debacle in 2012, which was all JPMorgan eventually drawn and quartered quite theatrically before Congress (and was a clear explanation of how banks used Fed reserves to manipulate markets, something most market participants had no idea was possible), this time JPMorgan was nowhere to be found in the aftermath of the historic margin call that destroyed hedge fund Archegos. Which is may explain why JPMorgan bank analyst Kian Abouhossein admits he is quite “puzzled” by the recent fallout from the Archegos implosion (or maybe JPM simply was not a Prime Broker of the notorious Tiger cub), which however does not prevent him from trying to calculate the capital at risk from the Archegos collapse. 
Goldman Sachs is being sued in London over allegations that its traders manipulated foreign exchange markets for profit, in the latest lawsuit filed by a British currency investment firm over trade front-running.