The Goldman Sachs Group and Bain Capital Partners have agreed to pay a total USD121 million in settlement of Dahl v Bain Capital Partners, according to law firm Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi.
Bain has agreed to a settlement for USD54 million, and Goldman Sachs agreed to a USD67 million settlement, as two of seven defendants in the case.
Plaintiffs are former shareholders of certain public companies who sold their shares to the defendant private equity firms in large leveraged buyouts (LBOs) announced between 2003 and 2007.
In 2007, the defendants, all major US private equity firms, were charged in the US District Court, District of Massachusetts, with a market allocation and bid-rigging conspiracy. The five other private equity firms include The Blackstone Group, The Carlyle Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, Silver Lake Technology Management and TPG Capital.
Plaintiffs sought damages as a result of the defendants' alleged collusion to not bid against each other on deals to drive down the prices of many takeovers of publicly traded companies.
"We went toe-to-toe with the defendants over the past seven years and Bain and Goldman Sachs are the first defendants to agree to settlement terms. We look forward to a trial against the remaining defendants, currently scheduled for November," says K Craig Wildfang, co-lead counsel for plaintiffs and co-chair of the antitrust and trade regulation practice at the firm.
