By Nell Gluckman, From The Am Law Daily

Deutsche Bank Group Services has agreed to pay $2.52 billion in a joint settlement with British and American authorities after pleading guilty to wire fraud.

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison litigation co-chair Theodore Wells, along with litigation partners Andrew Finch and Roberto Finzi, advised the bank on the settlements with the U.S. Department of Justice, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and the New York State Department of Financial Services, according to an agreement document.

Magic Circle firm Slaughter and May took the lead on a settlement with the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority. That team included the head of Slaughter and May’s dispute resolution and global investigations practices, Deborah Finkler, as well as commercial litigation partner Ewan Brown.

The U.K. publication Legal Business reports that the German firm Hengeler Mueller handled the defense in Germany.

The settlement brings resolution to a long-standing investigation into the bank’s role in the manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and other benchmarks used to set interest rates. Between 2003 and 2011, Deutsche Bank traders requested that bank employees who report LIBOR submit rates that are favorable to their trading positions, according to the Department of Justice announcement. The traders sometimes worked with other banks to manipulate the interest rates as well, the press release said.

Barclays Bank, UBS, The Royal Bank of Scotland, Cooperative Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank and Lloyds Banking Group have all also reached resolutions with the Justice Department on interest rate manipulation investigations, but according to The New York Times, Deutsche Bank’s settlement is the biggest.

The bank says that the internal investigation conducted on the matter included a review of more than 21 million electronic documents and 320,000 audio files. The bank’s general counsel for the Americas Steven Reich, who had been a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld until February, signed the agreements.

Paul Weiss has worked with the German bank before. The firm represented Deutsche Bank when U.S. District Judge Naomi Buchwald in Manhattan dismissed several claims related to the benchmark global interest rate, sibling publication Litigation Daily reported at the time.

For more on this story go to: http://www.americanlawyer.com/id=1202724420859/Paul-Weiss-Slaughter-and-May-Counsel-Deutsche-Bank-on-25-Billion-Settlement#ixzz3YFVIEFsK