By Mike Kentz
NEW YORK, April 18 (IFR) - Derivatives trading start-upTeraExchange filed an antitrust lawsuit Monday alleging thatsome of the biggest banks in the world conspired to blockcustomers from using its service.
The suit, first reported by IFR last week, charges that 12banks conspired to keep investors from trading interest ratesswaps on its platform, which was founded in 2010.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, BNP Paribas,Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, RBS and UBS were named in the suit.
The filing in US District Court in the Southern District ofNew York also named two competing trading platforms: ICAPCapital Markets and Tradeweb Markets.
Thomson Reuters distributes Tradeweb data and offerssubscribers access to its trading execution platform.
It was not immediately possible to get reaction to theallegations from all of the defendants.
But spokespeople from Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse,Deutsche Bank, ICAP and Tradeweb all declined to comment.
The court filing, which was seen by IFR, largely mirrors asuit filed in the same court by a Chicago pension fund inNovember.
The same 12 banks paid US$1.87bn in September to settlesimilar charges of anti-competitive behavior in the trading ofanother derivatives product, credit default swaps or CDS.
The banks did not admit guilt in that case.
The plaintiffs are represented by Thomas Ogden, partner atlaw firm Wollmuth Maher & Deutsch. (Reporting by Mike Kentz; Editing by Marc Carnegie)