(Bloomberg) - Illinois reached a tentative deal to settle a nearly decade-long lawsuit that alleged about a dozen of the biggest US banks engaged in price fixing in the municipal bond market.
The banks have offered to pay the state $68 million, according to Todd Schneider, an attorney who is representing plaintiff side. The proposal comes as Bank of America, Barclays Capital Inc., BMO Financial Corp., William Blair & Co. LLC, Citigroup Inc., Fifth Third Bancorp, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley were expected to go to trial in Illinois next month to face allegations they inflated the interest rates on certain types of municipal bonds to discourage investors from returning them for cash and colluded in setting the rates.
Barclays, Citigroup, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley all declined to comment on the proposed settlement. Representatives from Bank of America, BMO, William Blair and Fifth Third didn’t respond to email requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Illinois Attorney General’s Office declined to comment.
The case revolved around allegations that the banks, which acted as remarketing agents for long-term bonds with periodic rate adjustments, called variable-rate demand obligations or VRDOs, failed to get issuers the lowest possible interest rates on securities where rates were typically reset on a daily or weekly basis. This was allegedly done to discourage investors from returning them for cash.
The market for VRDO debt has been shrinking since the financial crisis when in 2008 more than $115 billion of debt was sold to refinance both auction-rate and insured floating-rate debt, as the auction market froze and insurance companies were downgraded amid the chaos.
“A $68 million settlement would be about 20% of the $349 million in damages sought by the Illinois plaintiff (before tripling). That’s a pretty good outcome for the defendant banks, especially if spread across the 8 of them,” said Elliott Stein of Bloomberg Intelligence. “And it signals that the other False Claims Act cases in California, New York and New Jersey are manageable for the banks too if they’re unable to prevail on some of their remaining defenses.”
Stein on Monday wrote that the banks were all likely to settle rather than face trial, and put a settlement value on the four False Claims Act cases at $1.5 billion. He said an antitrust lawsuit with similar allegations filed in the Southern District of New York might reach $1 billion.
By Joe Mysak
With assistance from Shruti Date Singh.
