On November 2, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) largely denied a motion to dismiss a class action lawsuit brought by the cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore (collectively, the Plaintiffs) in May 2019. The Plaintiffs brought the action on behalf of themselves as well as other municipal issuers of variable rate demand obligations (VRDOs) against several large banks (the Banks). Plaintiffs allege that beginning in April 2009 and continuing through November 2015 (the Class Period), these banks collectively forced state and local governments to pay inflated interest rates on the bonds and notes issued as VRDOs in derogation of the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts, as well as various state laws. The Banks deny the allegations and claim that they are baseless.
Judge Jesse M. Furman ruled that the Federal antitrust claims, as well as some of the state law claims, could continue.
BackgroundPublicly-Financed Projects
At issue in the lawsuit are the Banks’ alleged improper remarketing practices in connection with bonds and notes issued by state and local governmental entities, as well as other public agencies and authorities. Issuers use these bonds/notes to finance projects including, but not limited to, economic development, education, hospitals, housing, transportation, and utilities.
Public Support
Certain VRDO bonds and notes are secured by tax revenues – generally, corporate and personal income taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes from individual and corporate taxpayers in the respective jurisdictions.[1] Other VRDOs are secured by revenues generated from a particular community project being financed. Some such examples include: (i) tenant rents for affordable housing, (ii) medical charges for hospitals, (iii) mortgage payments for single family housing, (iv) utility payments for electric, water, and sewer systems, (v) landing fees/passenger ticket charges for airports, (vi) tolls for bridges and highways, (vii) fares for mass transit, (viii) tuition for colleges and universities, (ix) property taxes for K-12 education, and (x) assorted local taxes and user fees for libraries, government buildings, police and fire stations, and parks.
To incentivize projects with a valuable community purpose, the Federal government provides a tax exemption on the bonds/notes to investors. For a project to qualify for the exemption, the Internal Revenue Code requires that for-profit companies have a limited role in these financed projects. Notably, unlike most other bond markets, there is an even split between corporate investors and individual investors of municipal bonds/notes as individual investors benefit from the Federal (as well as state and local) tax-exemptions, are often utilized for an individual’s retirement savings and, importantly, provides monies to build and maintain beneficial projects to the community at large.
VRDO Structure
General
VRDO bonds are issued on a long-term basis but have short-term interest rates that reset on a periodic basis, typically weekly. Accordingly, VRDOs are very attractive for governmental entities as they can borrow long-term at generally lower short-term rates. VRDOs also offer flexibility to investors, who can exit the investment on a weekly basis through a remarketing agent. Here, remarketing agents are required to remarket the bonds to other investors. Alternatively, if there are no investors willing to purchase the VRDOs, the bonds are ‘put’ back to a rated bank. Both the remarketing agent and the bank providing liquidity (the Liquidity Bank), which are typically the same or affiliated entities, charge fees for their services. These fees must be added to the favorable interest rates to obtain the true cost of the borrowings to the governmental entities.
Interest Rate Swaps
Even though governmental entities (and their taxpayers) appreciate low interest rates, governmental entities generally are averse to variable rate risk, which can increase or decrease on a weekly basis. For this same reason, many homeowners do not like having adjustable rate mortgages, especially in a low fixed-rate environment. Accordingly, to assure that interest rates do not fluctuate, the Banks often provide parallel interest rate swaps so that the governmental entities take limited interest rate risk while the Banks take the variable rate risk.
However, there are numerous risks associated with swaps. These risks include, but are not limited to, basis risk, counterparty risk, and termination risk. Generally, governmental entities are not familiar with many of these risks. And these risks are often not fully explained by the Banks themselves. In general, in a falling interest rate environment (such as what has been occurring since the Great Recession, and exacerbated by the pandemic), interest rate swaps can be a significant drain on the resources of governmental entities. Additionally, conspiracies to manipulate interest rates (as allegedly occurred in this dispute) are the frequent subject of many of the cases cited by this court. Indeed, in resolving this motion, the court relied on several prior cases that involve Banks and other market participants manipulating interest rate swaps and other financial/commodity markets.[2]
Although the court discusses testimony from a Bank insider that VRDOs are a relatively low margin product for the Banks, interest rate swaps have historically been a very high margin product for banks offering swaps. Indeed, interest rate swaps have historically generated a significant percentage of large bank profits. For that very reason, such banks often encourage governmental entities to tie VRDOs to swaps. By this arrangement, the banks gain tremendous profits (and resultant banker bonuses), while the government reduces its perceived risks associated with VRDOs instead of undertaking a straight fixed rate bond deal or a VRDO with an interest rate cap.[3]
Remarketing Agent Role
In most remarketing agreements, the banks have two primary obligations. First, they must reset the VRDOs weekly interest rate at the lowest possible rate that would permit the bond to trade at par. Second, as mentioned above, the banks must remarket the VRDOs to other investors at the lowest possible rate when existing investors decide to exit...
