US Pension Fund Sues Biggest Banks In Canada

The Fire & Police Pension Association of Colorado is accusing Canada’s six biggest banks and three foreign lenders of conspiring to manipulate a Canadian interest rate benchmark to boost profits on derivatives trades for several years, until 2014. The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, alleges that the banks boosted their earnings from derivatives trades by manipulating the Canadian Dealer Offered Rate, or CDOR, a benchmark lending rate. The violations, including conspiracy under the Sherman Act and manipulation of the Commodity Exchange Act, allegedly took place for almost seven years, according to the filing. The defendants are Toronto-Dominion Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and National Bank of Canada, as well as HSBC Holdings Plc, Bank of America Corp. and Deutsche Bank AG. “Defendants conspired to suppress CDOR by making artificially lower submissions that did not reflect the true rate at which they were lending Canadian dollars in North America,” according to the filing.