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By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Thirteen of the world's biggestbanks have been accused by an Alaska pension fund of breakingU.S. antitrust and commodities laws by rigging an interest ratebenchmark used to price many financial instruments in the $710trillion derivatives market.
In a complaint filed on Thursday in U.S. District Court inManhattan, the Alaska Electrical Pension Fund said the banks rana "secret conspiracy" to set the "ISDAfix" rate at artificiallevels from 2009 to 2012, causing billions of dollars ofinvestor losses.
The defendants include Bank of America Corp,Barclays Plc, BNP Paribas SA, Citigroup Inc, Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Nomura Holdings Inc., Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, UBS AG and Wells Fargo & Co.
Also named as a defendant was ICAP Plc, a Britishbrokerage that in January lost its role as the administrator ofU.S. dollar ISDAfix rates in the wake of U.S. and U.K. probes.
The banks either declined to comment or did not immediatelyrespond to requests for comment. ICAP declined to comment,saying it had yet to be served with the complaint.
ISDAfix is used by companies and investors to price avariety of swaps transactions, commercial real estate mortgagesand structured debt securities.
According to the complaint, the defendants rigged ISDAfix byexecuting rapid trades just before the rate was set, known as"banging the close"; causing ICAP to delay processing tradesuntil the banks moved the rate where they wanted; and arrangingfor ICAP to post a rate that didn't reflect market activity.
As a result of such activity, the defendants would submit"the same or virtually the same USD ISDAfix rate quotes onalmost every single day, down to five decimal points," thecomplaint said.
The odds were "astronomical" against this occurring bychance, and only when the probes began did the similar ratesubmissions stop, the lawsuit said.
Goldman, HSBC, Nomura, RBS and Wells Fargo by last Septemberno longer had roles in setting ISDAfix, the complaint said.
The lawsuit was filed less than four hours after U.S.District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan allowed other investorsto pursue a lawsuit accusing 12 banks, most of which were alsosued over ISDAfix, of fixing prices in the roughly $21 trillioncredit default swaps market.
The case is Alaska Electrical Pension Fund v. Bank ofAmerica Corp et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District ofNew York, No. 14-07126. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by GrantMcCool)
