A recent Law 360 story by Dean Seal, “Class Counsel in $2B Forex Deal Awarded $22M in Expenses,” reports that a New York federal judge awarded nearly $22.5 million to an investor class' counsel for litigation expenses incurred in a $2.3 billion settlement resolving claims that 15 banks colluded to rig benchmark exchange rates in the foreign exchange markets.

U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield said class counsel - Scott & Scott Attorneys at Law LLP and Hausfeld LLP - had burned through more than $17 million on experts and consultants alone in achieving the eye-popping settlement, which received final approval on Aug. 6.  The remainder went toward managing documents, creating and maintain databases, travel and meals, she said.  “Such expenses were necessary and/or fair and reasonable in light of the work performed and results achieved in the settlement agreements,” Judge Schofield said.

The fee award is in keeping with promises from class counsel that it would not seek more than 18 percent of the $22.3 billion settlement for attorneys' fees and expenses, the judge said.  Scrutiny from Judge Schofield and fee objectors had hindered final approval of the settlement, leading the pair of co-lead attorneys to argue in May that the percentage was warranted because their teams engineered a stellar result by leveraging early settlements and finding new claims to add.  An order on the attorneys’ fee award has not yet been filed, according to court records.

Final approval of the settlement earlier this month dispatches the allegations against 15 of 16 banks — which include Bank of America Corp., Barclays Bank PLC, BNO Paribas, Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley, among others — accused by retirement plan participants in a June 2015 proposed class action of manipulating the benchmark rates used in foreign exchange transactions involving millions of dollars' worth of their plan assets.

Most of the settlement comes from a $2 billion deal investors wrangled in December 2015 with nine of the 16 accused banks.  Five more agreed to pay $111.2 million in a settlement that received initial approval in September, the same month that Deutsche Bank AG consented to its own $190 million settlement.  The lone holdout, Credit Suisse, is still battling the investors’ class certification bid.

The massive settlements are rooted in putative investor class actions filed amid investigations into the banks' foreign exchange trading activities, which revealed traders inside the banks had conspired to rig the $6 trillion foreign exchange market from at least 2007 to 2013.  Several of the banks ultimately forked over billions of dollars in fines after pleading guilty to criminal antitrust violations.

The suit is In re Foreign Exchange Benchmark Rates Antitrust Litigation, case number 1:13-cv-07789, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.