Alaska Pension, McDonalds Lawyer Up

The Alaska Electrical Pension Fund has sued 13 international banks, alleging rate manipulation, while McDonalds is suing Russia’s Pension Fund, stating it refused to let its employees accumulate their pension over the last 12 months.

The Alaskan fund filed a complaint to the Manhattan Federal Court on Thursday, claiming the banks ran a “secret conspiracy” to set the ISDAfix rate at artificial levels from 2009 to 2012, Bloomberg reported. This action caused billions of dollars of investor losses, the fund claimed.

The ISDAfix is used to set rates for interest rate derivatives and other financial instruments.

The pension fund accused the banks of executing rapid trades just before the rate was set, an action referred to as “banging the close”. This caused brokerage firm ICAP, which was also cited in the filing, to delay processing trades until the banks moved the rate where they wanted, meaning it did not necessarily reflect market activity.  

All of the defendants either declined to comment or did not respond to Bloomberg’s calls, the newswire said.

Elsewhere, McDonalds has sued the Russia Pension Fund—the national fund for all workers in the country—claiming it rejected its company documents and therefore its staff’s benefits have not accumulated since 2013.

Russian newspaper Izvestia reported the restaurant chain had filed at least eight lawsuits against the fund.

“Starting from the third quarter of 2013 and until today, in response to submitted documentation, McDonald’s company receives refusals from Russia’s Pension Fund to accept these documents, which is a direct violation of McDonald’s employees’ rights,” Izvestia quoted McDonald’s Russia Director for Public Relations Svetlana Poliakova as saying.

The fund responded, saying there were errors in the documents it had refused, including spelling mistakes in employees’ names and miscalculations in their salaries.

More than 10 of the 424 McDonalds restaurants operating in Russia have been closed amid tension between the Federation and the West.

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