Last checked at 
By Karen Brettell
NEW YORK, July 30 (Reuters) - MF Global has sued 12 largebanks, accusing them of restricting competition in the $25trillion credit default swap market, the latest in a string oflawsuits alleging that banks impeded new entrants by blockingexchange trading of the contracts.
The case, filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court in theNorthern District of Illinois, follows similar suits filed by anOhio-based pension fund, the Sheet Metal Workers Local 33Cleveland District Pension Plan, and by a group of Danishpension funds in the same court.
An additional plaintiff, the Value Recovery Fund, has fileda similar lawsuit in the Southern District of New York.
The companies allege that dealers used their ownership andcontrols over clearing, data and other entities crucial to themarket to block an independent clearinghouse from offeringexchange trading, to deny market participants real-time priceinformation and to stop new participants from entering themarket.
As a result of the bank actions, the companies allege thatthey paid artificially high trading costs to buy and sell thecredit default swaps, contracts that are used to protect againstlosses if a borrower defaults or to speculate on a company orcountry's credit quality.
Markit, the main CDS price provider and owner of thebenchmark CDS indexes, and trade group the International Swapsand Derivatives Association (ISDA), which owns documentation andother licenses, are also named in the suit.
The 12 banks named in the complaint are Bank of America Corp, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citigroup Inc, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank,Goldman Sachs Group Inc, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase &Co, Morgan Stanley, The Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS.
Markit, ISDA and all banks named in the suit either declinedcomment or did not immediately respond for comment.
