Charles Schwab has filed two lawsuits claiming 11 major banks conspired to manipulate Libor, a floating benchmark that's used to set the interest rates of hundreds of trillions of dollars of securities. Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase are among the accused.

Filed in U.S. District Court in San Franscisco (Schwab's home), the banks broke antitrust, racketeering and securities laws by colluding to push Libor down. Schwab says the teamwork cost it tens of billions of dollar in returns on Libor-based investments.

Roughly $350tn financial products are based on Libor, which means small dips in the rate can cost borrowers and lenders billions in interest income.Publish

Others banks accused include Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, RBS, UBS AG and WestLB AG.

The suit is one of many brought by asset managers and pension funds over Libor. The suits were spurred by reports that U.S. and Japanese regulators were investigating possible manipulation, especially from 2006-2008. [Reuters, 8/25/11]