We won summary judgment as liaison counsel for a large bank joint defense group

On September 25, 2025, Davis Polk secured a complete victory on summary judgment in a long-running, high-profile civil antitrust conspiracy case related to alleged manipulation of the U.S. dollar London Interbank Offer Rate (LIBOR) during the financial crisis. Davis Polk served as liaison counsel for a joint defense group of 16 banks alleged to have been a part of the conspiracy. The case – In re LIBOR-Based Financial Instruments Antitrust Litigation, 11-MDL-2262 (NRB) (S.D.N.Y.) – has been one of the most complex and closely watched antitrust matters this century.

LIBOR is a benchmark interest rate that was once considered the world’s “most important number.” Every day, 16 large financial institutions would provide estimates of their borrowing costs in various tenors to a centralized clearinghouse, which would calculate the trimmed mean for each tenor and publish the results. These benchmark rates were incorporated into trillions of dollars worth of financial instruments of every type.

Beginning in 2011, several classes of plaintiffs (as well as opt-outs) began filing lawsuits alleging that all of the banks on the LIBOR “panel” had conspired between 2007 and 2009 to suppress LIBOR by making artificially low submissions, which the plaintiffs claimed resulted in them losing money on their various transactions, such as swaps and bonds, that were tied to LIBOR. All the civil cases were eventually consolidated in an MDL in front of Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in the Southern District of New York. Although it evolved over the years, the plaintiffs’ eventual theory of the case was that the panel banks had coordinated to make artificially low submissions in order to project financial strength to the market during the financial crisis and prevent the threat of contagion in the event that one bank appeared to be in financial turmoil.

Before discovery started in earnest, the parties litigated multiple issues related to, among other things, personal jurisdiction, statutes of limitation, the sufficiency of the pleadings for plaintiffs’ antitrust and many other claims, and class certification (as to three separate putative classes). Judge Buchwald issued decisions on these topics that totaled over 1,000 pages. The case went up to the Second Circuit four separate times. In the summary judgment decision, Judge Buchwald remarked that the printed docket sheet reflecting all the filings in the case “would be roughly 1,400 pages.”

Following the resolution of the various issues on the pleadings, the case entered discovery in 2022. The plaintiffs took the depositions of 60 current and former bank employees. The defendants moved for summary judgment in October 2024. The filings on summary judgment ultimately spanned around 2,100 pages of briefing and Rule 56.1 statements and over 1,900 exhibits. The defendants argued that the plaintiffs had failed to proffer evidence sufficient to raise a triable issue of fact as to either the existence of a conspiracy or whether defendants’ submissions were unlawfully suppressed.

On September 25, 2025, Judge Buchwald granted the defendants’ motion in a strong and well-reasoned 273-page opinion.

Judge Buchwald found that the plaintiffs’ asserted conspiracy was “economically senseless” and that “despite nearly a decade spent building an evidentiary record, plaintiffs have not proffered evidence sufficient to create any dispute of material fact as to the existence of a multi-year, sixteen-bank conspiracy to suppress LIBOR.” The Court also held that the plaintiffs “cannot establish that they suffered an injury [as] a result of the defendants’ conduct” because the evidence plaintiffs proffered did not “come close” to demonstrating that a reasonable jury could find that LIBOR was lower than it otherwise would have been absent the conspiracy.

The Davis Polk team included partners Arthur J. Burke and Sheila R. Adams James, counsel Patrick W. Blakemore and Caroline Stern and associates Nicholas D’Angelo, Christina Costello, Benjamin J. Hartman, Hugh Hansard Verrier, Nadia Dalanne Greggs, Tony Sun, and Walker Halstad. Dozens of current and former Davis Polk attorneys made contributions to this case over the years, including senior counsel Robert F. Wise Jr. All members of the Davis Polk team are based in the New York office.

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