Aug 1 (Reuters) - Principal Financial Group Inc, alarge asset management and insurance company, on Thursday fileda federal lawsuit accusing nearly 30 defendants, more than halfof which are banks, of rigging global benchmark interest rates.
The lawsuit claims that the defendants conspired to depressthe London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), a rate at the heartof hundreds of trillions of dollars of financial products, fromAugust 2007 to May 2010.
Principal said this caused it to earn less money fromLibor-linked investments than if the price-fixing did not occur.The company sued in its hometown of Des Moines, Iowa.
The defendants include such lenders as Bank of America Corp, Barclays Plc, Citigroup Inc, DeutscheBank AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase &Co, Royal Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of ScotlandGroup Plc and UBS AG.
They have long sought to dismiss private U.S. lawsuits overLibor, amid a sprawl of regulatory probes in theUnited States and Europe that has so far led Barclays, RBS andUBS to agree to more than $2.6 billion of settlements.
Such accords do not resolve private lawsuits such asPrincipal's or others that are pending or yet to be filed.
In March, a New York federal judge dismissed a substantialpart of the claims against in a group of consolidated privatelawsuits over alleged Libor manipulation.
Principal is among the larger individual plaintiffs to suebanks in the United States over Libor. Its market value tops $13billion, and the company last week said it has more than $450billion of assets under management.
The case is Principal Financial Group Inc et al v. Bank ofAmerica Corp et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District ofIowa, No. 13-00335.