On November 5, 2019, the British Competition Appeals Tribunal
held its first hearing for a consumer antitrust suit that will
serve as a "test case" for American-style class action
suits in the United Kingdom. Investors brought the collective
action suit against banks including JPMorgan, Citibank, and
Barclays, claiming that the banks unlawfully manipulated the
foreign exchange market between 2007 and 2013 in violation of
European competition laws. The plaintiffs include U.K.-based
pension funds, asset managers, and corporations.57
In 2015, the United Kingdom passed the Consumer Rights Act, a
law that introduced the possibility of initiating
"opt-out" collective action suits for breaches of British
or European Union competition law. The "opt-out"
collective action would automatically bind U.K.-based members of a
deffined group to the result of a legal action, and thus allow them
to claim from the pool of damages unless they opt-out, much like in
an American-style
