The Antitrust Week In Review

Here are some of the developments in antitrust news this past week that we found interesting and are following.

Rise of Institutional Investors Raises Questions of Collusion.  BlackRock, Vanguard and other big institutional investors own roughly 70 percent of the public stock market, according to some reports.  People are starting to ask whether this allows companies — now having the same owners — to compete less and raise prices.  In Senate testimony last month, the Justice Department’s antitrust chief, William J. Baer, said the department was investigating the potential antitrust implications of the rise of institutional shareholders.

Exclusive: Trading start-ups prep major bank antitrust suits.  Two online trading start-ups are reportedly preparing antitrust suits alleging that major banks conspired to block customers from using their platforms to trade interest rate swaps.  TeraExchange and Javelin Capital Markets will claim the banks threatened to cut off customers who tried to trade on the platforms, according to sources.  Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS will be named, the sources said.

Deutsche Bank settles U.S. gold, silver price-fixing litigation.  Deutsche Bank AG has agreed to settle U.S. lawsuits accusing it of conspiring with other banks to manipulate gold and silver prices at investors’ expense, according to court papers.  The settlements were disclosed in letters filed in Manhattan federal court by lawyers representing investors and traders who accused Deutsche Bank of violating U.S. antitrust law.  Terms were not disclosed, but both settlements will include monetary payments by the German bank.  Deutsche Bank also agreed to help the plaintiffs pursue claims against other defendants.

Canadian Pacific Ends Bid for Norfolk Southern.  After five months of pressure, three merger offers and one rejection from regulators, Canadian Pacific Railway said that it had abandoned efforts to combine with its American railroad counterpart Norfolk Southern.  Canadian Pacific withdrew a resolution for Norfolk Southern shareholders to vote on negotiations between the two companies, according to a statement by Canadian Pacific.  Norfolk Southern resisted the proposed railroad merger from the beginning, and the termination joins a string of proposed deals that have fallen apart in the last week because of regulatory concerns.