A recent Law 360 story by Melissa Daniels, “Barclays Forex Rigging Settlement Nets $8.75M in Atty Fees,” reports that counsel for Axiom Investment Advisors LLC will receive $8.75 million from a $50 million settlement with Barclays Bank LLC in a New York federal court action filed over purported misuse of a foreign exchange trading system to boost bank profits. The fee award equals 17.5 percent of the settlement, which will be divvied up among four firms: Scott + Scott LLP and Korein Tillery LLC, who are class counsel, as well as Hausfeld LLP and Nussbaum Law Group PC.
“Class counsel shall allocate the attorneys’ fees awarded among plaintiff’s counsel in a matter that they, in good faith, believe reflects the contributions of such counsel to the institution, prosecution and settlement of the action,” U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield said in a five-page order. The plaintiffs' attorneys will also receive more than $339,000 in reimbursements, the order said.
The settlement, announced in February 2016, ended Axiom Investment Advisors LLC’s class action allegations that Barclays used its Last Look system, which monitors foreign exchange trades, to put a slight hold on clients' foreign exchange orders so it could determine whether the price a customer sought to pay was profitable for the bank. It would then enter a different price or cancel trades with little or no explanation, Axiom said.
The firms who worked on the case said in their request for fees they put in more than 5,100 hours on the case. They also said the requested fee amount was actually below the typical amounts awarded in comparable cases in the Second Circuit's courts. Axiom will receive a service award of $10,000 from the settlement fund, according to Judge Schofield’s order.
Axiom filed its suit in late November 2015, less than two weeks after Barclays was hit with a $150 million fine by the New York Department of Financial Services for misconduct using the Last Look system, forcing it to fire its global head of electronic fixed income, currencies and commodities automated flow trading.
The settlement class includes anyone who was affected by these practices between June 1, 2008, and the date the settlement is preliminarily approved, as long as they lived in the U.S. or placed an order using BARX, the bank’s electronic trading platform. Judge Schofield’s order said notices have been mailed to 1,373 potential settlement class members about the proposed 17.5 percent fee award.
The case is Axiom Investment Advisors LLC v. Barclays Bank PLC, et al., case number 1:15-cv-09323, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.