In re Interest Rate Swaps Antitrust Litig.
civil; MDL; later-filed group-boycott complaint by a third trading platform (trueEX) against swap-dealer banks; defendants' 12(b)(6) motion denied as to the Sherman Act claim (result: claimant-won)
Facts
- 1 Concerted action ("contract, combination ... or conspiracy") between separate economic decisionmakers satisfied pleaded
It has held that the original plaintiffs (Javelin, Tera, and the putative class) have convincingly pled a boycott by the same Dealers of Javelin and Tera's all-to-all trading platforms.
- 1 Concerted action ("contract, combination ... or conspiracy") between separate economic decisionmakers satisfied pleaded
The claimed Dealer behavior towards trueEX thus must be evaluated, not myopically as the Dealers' brief largely proceeds, but against the backdrop of a contemporaneous Dealer plot against entities that posed a similar threat to the Dealers' business model and profitability.
- 1 Concerted action ("contract, combination ... or conspiracy") between separate economic decisionmakers satisfied pleaded
The Dealers provided only limited liquidity to multiple trueEX's platforms-both its CLOB and RFQ platforms-with the effect of denying it enough volume in IRS transactions in general to eat into the Dealers' IRS market share.
- 1 Concerted action ("contract, combination ... or conspiracy") between separate economic decisionmakers satisfied pleaded
The Dealers created unreasonable delays and erected artificial barriers to the progress of the trueEX platform.
- 1 Concerted action ("contract, combination ... or conspiracy") between separate economic decisionmakers satisfied pleaded
The Dealers conditioned their provision of liquidity to all-to-all trading platforms upon the platforms use of "name give up."
- 1 Concerted action ("contract, combination ... or conspiracy") between separate economic decisionmakers satisfied pleaded
The Dealers attempted to placate trueEX with minor business opportunities designed to create the illusion of cooperation or progress.
- 1 Concerted action ("contract, combination ... or conspiracy") between separate economic decisionmakers satisfied pleaded
To be plausibly pled, a conspiracy to marginalize a looming competitive threat does not require that allegations that each conspirator acted at every turn maximally to ice that threat,
- 1 Concerted action ("contract, combination ... or conspiracy") between separate economic decisionmakers satisfied pleaded
On its review, the Court holds, trueEX has plausibly pled a ยง 1 boycott conspiracy aimed at harming, marginalizing, and/or destroying-along with the other two platforms-its platform.
- 1 Concerted action ("contract, combination ... or conspiracy") between separate economic decisionmakers satisfied pleaded
Do the facts pled plausibly support that the individual Dealer, already implicated in a conspiracy against two like platforms, was aware of the conspiracy's third and parallel object (as to trueEX's platform)?
- 1 Concerted action ("contract, combination ... or conspiracy") between separate economic decisionmakers satisfied pleaded
Defendants argue that as to a number of Dealers, the affirmative acts of obstruction towards trueEX that are pled are "razor thin."
- 1 Concerted action ("contract, combination ... or conspiracy") between separate economic decisionmakers satisfied pleaded
But trueEX pleads that checking its platform's advance was but one object of a broader Dealer conspiracy, in which, as IRS I held , each of the surviving Dealer Defendants have been plausibly implicated.
- 1 Concerted action ("contract, combination ... or conspiracy") between separate economic decisionmakers satisfied pleaded
the Court's assessment is that the inferences urged by trueEX are plausible enough to preclude granting a motion to dismiss its AC as to any one Defendant Dealer