A Davis Polk team received runner-up honors in AmLaw Litigation Daily’s “Litigator of the Week” column for securing 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 lead counsel for a joint defense group of 16 banks alleged to have been a part of the conspiracy. The case has been one of the most complex and closely watched antitrust matters this century.

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.

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.

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.

“Litigator of the Week Runners-Up,” AmLaw Litigation Daily (October 3, 2025) (subscription required) 

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