Article: Aussie Bank Westpac Inks $25M Deal In Rate-Rigging Suit

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Aussie Bank Westpac Inks $25M Deal In Rate-Rigging Suit

Caleb Drickey, 02 March 2021

Australian bank Westpac has agreed to a $25 million deal settling claims that it conspired with a cabal of banking institutions to rig the price of derivatives based on an Australian foreign exchange benchmark.

Tuesday’s proposed deal would also compel Westpac, which denied all illegal conduct or wrongdoing, to turn over information related to the alleged price-fixing conspiracy. This would, according to the investors, strengthen cases against Westpac’s co-defendants and lead to similarly-structured deals with the accused conspirators.

In a memorandum, representatives for the proposed class expressed confidence that the newly announced deal would lead to further victories against defendant banks. Continue reading “Article: Aussie Bank Westpac Inks $25M Deal In Rate-Rigging Suit”

Article: The Mysterious London Traders Accused of Manipulating Oil Markets — and the Anonymous Hedge Fund, Rare-Coin Expert, and Day Traders Who Are Fighting Back

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The Mysterious London Traders Accused of Manipulating Oil Markets — and the Anonymous Hedge Fund, Rare-Coin Expert, and Day Traders Who Are Fighting Back

Leah McGrath Goodman, 17 September 2020

Robert Mish is not an oil trader. He’s a numismatist — an expert in rare coins, precious metals, and currencies. Growing up in Brooklyn, he began by collecting stamps and playing cards at the age of four. From there, he moved on to coins and, eventually, valuable antiquities, heading out to California to start his own business in Menlo Park, Mish International Monetary. He traveled the world attending coin shows and became an authority on commodities such as gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, writing and contributing to a number of books.

This year, two months after his 73rd birthday, Mish found himself trading U.S. crude oil futures at perhaps their most inopportune moment: On April 20, the price of oil fell to zero — and kept falling. Mish, an expert in commodities, was holding ten oil contracts as the market went over the edge.

After 50 years of inspecting currencies and stores of value from the Americas to Europe to Asia, Mish can also claim another expertise: He is an expert in counterfeit detection. That day, as he watched his oil trades go south, he picked up the phone and called one of the best market-manipulation lawyers in the country.

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Article: 30 Firms to Pay $900 Million In Investor Suit

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30 Firms to Pay $900 Million In Investor Suit

David Barboza

New York Times, 25 December 1997

Thirty brokerage firms, including some of the biggest and most trusted names on Wall Street, agreed yesterday to pay about $900 million to end a civil suit contending they schemed with one another for years to fix prices on the Nasdaq stock market.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit, which represented tens of thousands of investors, called it the biggest settlement ever of a price-fixing lawsuit.

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THE DOLLAR HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE : DO YOUR ASSETS?