Financial service giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) has reached a $100 million settlement to resolve civil lawsuits in the U.S. that sought damages for the alleged rigging of foreign currency markets, according to media reports on Monday. The settlement is still subject to court approval.
JPMorgan is said to be the first among a group of twelve banks to have reached a settlement. The lawsuits were filed in 2013 by US counterparties, market participants and others who were impacted by the currency manipulation since January 2013.
The lawsuits charged the banks of allegedly rigging currency rates to boost profit at the expense of customers and investors.
The lawsuit reportedly notes that the twelve major banks held an 84 percent global market share in currency trading, and were counterparties in 98 percent of US spot volume.
The eleven other defendant banks include Swiss banking giants UBS AG (UBS) and Credit Suisse (CS); British lenders HSBC Holdings Plc (HBC, HSBA.L), Barclays Plc (BCS, BARC.L) and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS, RBS.L) as well as other US financial giants Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS) and Citigroup, Inc. (C). It also includes French lender BNP Paribas SA (BNPQY.PK, BNP.L) and German lender Deutsche Bank AG (DB).
All of the banks, including JPMorgan, had filed a joint motion in the US District Court in New York to dismiss the lawsuits in May. This settlement will put pressure on the other eleven banks to follow suit.
JPMorgan has already paid $660 million as part of a $4.3 billion settlement reached in November with six major global banks to resolve charges of foreign exchange rate rigging bought by financial regulators in the U.S., the U.K., and Switzerland. UBS, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Citigroup, and Bank of America were also part of the multi-billon dollar settlement.
JPM closed Monday's regular trading session at $60.55, down $1.94 or 3.10% on a volume of 20.10 million shares.
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