A US judge has awarded $102 million in legal fees to law firms Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll for their work on a $580 million settlement for investors who accused major banks of conspiring to curb competition in the stock lending market.
The institutional investors that filed the lawsuit in 2017 claimed a group of big banks had conspired to prevent modernization in the trillion-dollar market for stock lending, boycotting startup firms.
The investors alleged they had been charged excessive fees.
Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Credit Suisse agreed collectively to pay $580 million to settle the antitrust lawsuit. Bank of America is the lone remaining defendant.
The settlements with the banks required new antitrust compliance measures and other reforms for defendant EquiLend, which was a joint venture among the banks. The class attorneys valued the industry reforms at $319 million, settlement papers show.