By Sam Tobin
LONDON (Reuters) – Barclays asked London’s High Court on Monday to halve a shareholder lawsuit worth up to 560 million pounds ($720 million) accusing the British bank of misleading the market over its private ‘dark pool’ trading platforms .
Hundreds of institutional investors have filed a lawsuit after more than £2 billion was wiped off Barclays’ value in 2014, when New York’s attorney general filed a complaint against the lender over a trading system known as “Barclays LX”.
The investors say Barclays misled its customers about Barclays LX – a ‘dark pool’ trading platform where orders are not visible to other traders until they are executed – and that the bank failed to publish relevant information for shareholders.
Barclays settled the case in New York in 2016, agreeing to pay a $70 million fine, admit to violating securities laws and install an independent regulator.
The lawsuit in London was brought by a number of shareholders who say they relied on information published by Barclays, while other shareholders say they relied on Barclays’ share price or its status as a listed company with a duty to make relevant information public.
However, Barclays has asked for more than half of the case – amounting to around £330m of the total value – to be dismissed.
The bank’s lawyer, Helen Davies, said it was essential in a shareholder lawsuit that claimants had relied on information published by a listed company.
This meant, she argued, that claims by investors who said they relied solely on Barclays’ share value or listed status could not stand.
The investors’ lawyer, Jonathan Nash, said all of the plaintiffs’ cases should proceed towards an initial trial, which will be heard from October 2025.
Nash argued in court filings that investors in publicly traded companies “have the right to trade on the basis that the price of shares of a publicly traded issuer includes all material information.”
