## Facts

- Plaintiffs were FX market participants who traded FX spot, forwards, and swaps directly with defendant banks, alleging overcharges from coordinated widening of bid-ask spreads in FX spot trades.
- Defendant banks allegedly used multi-bank chat rooms to coordinate quotes and widen spreads across numerous currency pairs.
- By the time of the decision, most defendant banks had settled, leaving Credit Suisse entities as the remaining defendants relevant to class certification.
- Plaintiffs sought certification of two Rule 23(b)(3) damages classes (an “Exchange Class” and an “OTC Class”) and appointment of class counsel.
- Credit Suisse opposed certification and moved under Daubert to exclude or limit several plaintiff expert opinions offered to support classwide proof of impact and damages.

## Issues

1. Whether plaintiffs satisfied Rule 23(b)(3), including predominance and manageability, to certify damages classes for all issues.
2. Whether the court could certify an issue class under Rule 23(c)(4) to decide common questions about (a) existence of a conspiracy to widen spreads and (b) Credit Suisse’s participation.
3. Whether plaintiffs’ expert evidence was admissible under Daubert for class-certification purposes, particularly regarding classwide impact and damages.

## Decision

- Denied certification of any Rule 23(b)(3) damages class for all issues.
- Denied certification of the proposed Exchange Class for all purposes.
- Granted certification of a Rule 23(c)(4) OTC issue class limited to: (1) existence of a conspiracy to widen spot-market spreads and (2) Credit Suisse’s participation in that conspiracy.
- Appointed proposed counsel as class counsel under Rule 23(g).
- Granted defendants’ Daubert motions in part and otherwise denied them as moot in light of the limited issue-class certification.

## Legal Principles

- Rule 23(a) (numerosity, commonality, typicality, adequacy) may be satisfied even when Rule 23(b)(3) predominance and manageability are not.
- Rule 23(b)(3) predominance is not met where resolving liability and damages would require extensive individualized, trade-by-trade inquiries.
- Individualized questions relevant to predominance included whether each trade fell within the FTAIA’s reach, whether trades were excluded categories (e.g., resting orders or benchmark trades), and whether a defendant provided liquidity for the particular trade.
- Rule 23(c)(4) permits certification of particular common issues when those issues are susceptible to generalized proof and can be efficiently adjudicated on a classwide basis, even if a full damages class is not manageable.
- Daubert scrutiny applies at class certification to expert opinions offered to establish classwide proof; limitations on class scope can render impact-and-damages opinions less material to certification.

## Conclusion

The court refused to certify broad antitrust damages classes because individualized, trade-level questions predominated, but it certified an OTC issue class to decide whether a spread-widening conspiracy existed and whether Credit Suisse joined it, while appointing class counsel and narrowing expert disputes through partial Daubert rulings.


In re Foreign Exch. Benchmark Rates Antitrust Litig., 334 F.R.D. 62 (S.D.N.Y. 2019)