Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ANTITRUST—S.D.N.Y.: Currenex foreign exchange bid rigging class certified, (Jun 15, 2026)

By Kenneth H. Ryesky, M.B.A., J.D.

Secret manipulation of tie-breaking algorithms, and disclosure of nonpublic information to a conspiracy member, were alleged to inflate prices paid in currency exchange transactions.

The federal district court in New York City has granted class approval in an action against a foreign exchange platform operator and other institutions it allegedly conspired with to inflate the exchange rates paid by currency traders. The plaintiffs in this putative class action accused defendant Currenex, Inc. (Currenex) of conspiring with a narrow set of participants on the Currenex foreign exchange trading platform to “rig” auctions for foreign exchange transactions. The court found that the class met the requisites for certification. Class counsel was also approved (Edmar Financial Company, LLC v. Currenex, Inc., No. 1:21-cv-06598-LAK-HJR (S.D.N.Y. Jun. 11, 2026)).

Background. The conversion of one country's currency for another's has occurred from time immemorial. Today, trillions of dollars change hands daily in foreign exchange (FX). The FX market participants entail (1) liquidity providers, typically banks and similar financial institutions, who post or otherwise announce the prices at which they are willing to buy or sell a given currency; and (2) liquidity takers, who execute trades on the terms posted by the liquidity providers. It is not uncommon for a FX market participant to be both a liquidity provider and a liquidity taker.

Currenex, Inc. has developed Internet-based technologies which it promotes as "offering the FX community high-performance technology and deep pools of liquidity for anonymous and disclosed trade execution." The Currenex platform matches up currency buyers with currency sellers, who then consummate the transaction once the matchup is made. Timewise, the matchups are made in fractions of a second, but the exchange rate often fluctuates even more rapidly. Where there are more than one potential matches to a particular price asked by a liquidity provider, the Currenex platform has various "tie-breaker" mechanisms which determine which bidder will be matched to the liquidity provider.

Some users of the Currenex platform filed a putative class action lawsuit against Currenex and other entities, alleging that Currenex conspired with other entities to secretly rig its matchup system, including its use of tie-breaker algorithms, to favor the co-conspirators by increasing their per-trade profit margins. The complaint also alleged that Currenex provided to its co-conspirators data regarding the liquidity taker class members that otherwise would be unavailable to the public. The plaintiffs moved for class certification and class counsel appointment.

Class action-prerequisites. The court found that the putative class satisfies the prerequisites to class action. The numerosity requirement was easily satisfied. There was no dispute that the putative class numbered in the hundreds, given that the conduct complained of occurred in "the largest and most liquid financial market in the world" over a period of 20 years or more; this handily surpassed the threshold of the presumption of numerosity for classes of more than 40 members, even though the size of the class could not be reckoned with the exactitude needed to administer any settlement.

Commonality was adequately established. The gravamen of each complaint was that "Currenex, in exchange for money, secretly assigned more favorable priorities to certain price streams of" certain defendants, while according one "administrator-level access to the platform." For similar reasons, the typicality requisite was also established; the fact that some of the putative class members were successors to entities that had conducted the trades in the earlier days of the class period was irrelevant because all class members and their predecessors and successors would advance the same arguments.

The adequacy requisite was also fulfilled. There was no dispute that the proposed class counsel was experienced, qualified, and otherwise suitable to represent the class. The judge did, however, reject the defendants' argument that the class representatives had conflicts with other class members because they were assigned different priorities by the Currenex algorithm. Here, the priority assignment itself was not complained of; it was the secrecy of the priority assignments, together with the disclosure of information to one of the defendants, that was alleged to have caused harm to the class members.

Class action-predominance. Having found the class action prerequisites fulfilled, the court found that the complaints of the putative class predominated whatever other issues the individual class members might have [Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b)]. Common injury was claimed from paying inflated prices to Currenex and/or the other defendants. The plaintiffs' expert's report showed that damages could be calculated on a class-wide basis.

As for causation, although the plaintiffs did not show that each and every member of the proposed class actually read the published statements of Currenex, the plaintiffs' fraud by omission theory was unrebutted. Here, all class members "sought to trade on Currenex to buy or sell foreign currency at fair prices set by an efficient market undistorted by manipulation" and were thus injured by the alleged actions of the defendants.

The court also found that assertion of the statute of limitations defense was premature at this stage. The law of New York was found to apply because (1) the trading was conducted in New York; (2) some of the contracts entered into by class members had a New York choice of law clause; and (3) the federal court is located in New York. Settlements entered into by some class members in previous litigation did not necessarily release the defendants from all claims of a similar nature.

Class action-superiority. For reasons similar to its predominance finding, the court found that the class action method was superior to other routes to resolve the conflict. The court noted that all defendants have offices if not headquarters in New York, thereby making it "geographically convenient for the proposed class action to proceed" there instead of multiple proceedings in diverse courts throughout the nation. Judicial economy would be well served by the use of a class action.

The Case is No. 1:21-cv-06598-LAK-HJR.

Judge: Kaplan, L.

Attorneys: Aaron M. Zigler (Zigler Law Group, LLC) for Edmar Financial Co., LLC. Eric Alan Kuwana (Alston & Bird LLP) for Currenex, Inc.

Companies: Edmar Financial Co., LLC; Currenex, Inc.

Cases: Antitrust NewYorkNews