Case
United States v. Richard Usher, et al.
Analysis Group was retained on behalf of Richard Usher, Christopher Ashton, and Rohan Ramchandani, three London-based foreign exchange (FX) traders accused by the US Department of Justice Antitrust Division of violating the Sherman Act by colluding in the Euro-US dollar currency pair. The three traders were alleged to have used an online Bloomberg chatroom to coordinate their trading on the spot Euro-dollar market.
An Analysis Group team led by CEO Pierre Cremieux, Managing Principals Richard Starfield and Samuel Weglein, and Principals Xinyu Ji and Chris Feige supported two academic affiliates. Finance expert Professor Michael Melvin testified on chatroom data and trading behavior, and opined that the defendants had pursued independent trading strategies and used the chatroom to trade with each other in buy-sell transactions, creating liquidity rather than coordinating horizontal trading strategy. Antitrust expert Professor Edward Snyder analyzed whether the alleged conduct was anticompetitive in nature.
A jury in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York acquitted the three traders of all charges in four hours of deliberation after a three-week trial. Subsequently, Mr. Usher and Mr. Ramchandani were the object of a separate administrative proceeding by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of Currency (OCC), which alleged that the two traders had engaged in cartel activity through the Bloomberg chatroom, allegedly amounting to “unsafe or unsound practices” and a breach of their fiduciary duties. Following testimony from Professors Melvin and Snyder and regulatory expert Dr. James Overdahl, the OCC withdrew its charges, ending the case against the traders.
Testifiers
Michael Melvin
AffiliateProfessor Melvin has lengthy academic and business experience in international finance – including foreign exchange market microstructure – and multi-asset investment strategies. His current research focuses on currency carry trades, currency transaction costs, and exchange rate models. Professor Melvin has published widely on topics that include exchange rates, currency investing, and international equity markets. Previous faculty appointments have included Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business; the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Los Angeles; and Northwestern University.
In addition to his academic achievements, Professor Melvin has deep in-house experience in the finance industry. Before joining the Rady School, he was managing director and senior research advisor in multi-asset strategies at BlackRock. He also served as the head of currency and fixed-income research in the Global Market Strategies Group at BlackRock and Barclays Global Investors. Professor Melvin is former coeditor of the Journal of International Money and Finance, and he has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Board, the International Monetary Fund, and the Bank for International Settlements.
Meet Our People
Chris Feige
PrincipalMr. Feige specializes in the areas of finance, securities, and financial markets. He has worked on and managed a range of securities and valuation projects in the UK and Europe. Mr. Feige has been appointed as expert in Dutch court to provide valuation and securities claims reports in support of Steinhoff’s global securities settlement, and gave evidence in the Dutch Enterprise Chamber regarding the valuation of Getir. He has also managed teams evaluating shareholder reliance and disclosure materiality and estimating counterfactual share prices in UK Financial Services and Markets Act (FSMA) Section 90A litigation matters. Mr. Feige has supported experts analyzing the volume of false and spam accounts on Twitter, Twitter’s information security infrastructure, Twitter’s data privacy and compliance with a US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) consent decree, and share price and valuation issues on behalf of Twitter in Twitter v. Musk in which Elon Musk eventually purchased Twitter at his initial offer price. In cases involving alleged market manipulation in the foreign exchange (FX) and IBOR markets, he has analyzed trade data and evaluated alleged manipulation strategies. Mr. Feige worked on USA v. Richard Usher, et al., and the Foreign Exchange Class Antitrust Litigation, analyzing FX trade and chat data, as well as competition issues; preparing experts for testimony at trial; and providing data analyses and consulting support to counsel throughout the projects. He has also worked on a range of international arbitration cases, including valuation, damages, and competition analyses. In addition, he has developed complex valuation models, including discounted cash flow models, and analyzed asset-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, and other securitized products in support of expert testimony in a number of bankruptcy and damages matters. Mr. Feige has also worked on a number of international arbitrations valuing defaulted sovereign debt, expropriated oil fields, and retail operations. His work has been published in several industry journals.