Banks including Bank of America Corp., Barclays Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. won dismissal of antitrust lawsuits by plaintiffs claiming that they were harmed by the rigging of the London interbank offered rate (Libor), Bloomberg News reported yesterday. In more than two dozen interrelated cases before U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in New York, the banks were alleged to have conspired to depress Libor by understating their borrowing costs, thereby lowering their interest expenses on products tied to the rates. While potential damages were estimated to be in the billions of dollars, the judge ruled that the cases must be dismissed because of the inability of litigants that included brokerage Charles Schwab Corp., pension funds and other bondholders to show they were harmed. Buchwald, whose March 29 ruling allowed some commodities-manipulations claims to proceed to a trial, said that, while private plaintiffs must show actual harm, her ruling did not impede governments from pursuing antitrust claims tied to attempts to manipulate Libor.
