The Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund’s ongoing antitrust litigation involving the world’s largest banks cleared a major hurdle on July 28, 2017, when Judge Paul Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that the suit could proceed. The Fund’s lawsuit, filed in November 2015, alleges that the world’s largest investment banks conspired to engineer and maintain a collusive and anti-competitive stranglehold over the market for interest rate swaps (IRS), in violation of federal antitrust laws. Such alleged actions harm investors in one of the world’s largest financial markets. CTPF is represented by Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP.
“We are pleased to see that the court has recognized the legitimacy and importance of this action,” said Jay C. Rehak, President of the CTPF Board of Trustees. “We have taken this stand against the world’s largest investment banks because a conspiracy of this scale cannot go unchecked. As consumers of financial products, we must trust that the institutions at the heart of our financial system act responsibly and transparently. We look forward to holding the banks accountable for their egregious behavior.”
The “Dealer Defendant” banks named in the complaint include Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and UBS.