A group of Saxo Bank clients that traded the Swiss franc and were hit hard by the SNBomb, have come together and contracted a law firm to represent them.
Andersen Partners, a Danish firm that also has an office in Germany, is currently examining the documents of Danish and other Saxo clients for a potential class action lawsuit.
Lawyers Jakob Ravnsbo and Søren Stig Hansen are examining the “lawfulness of Saxo Bank’s adjustment of their clients’ transaction prices after the transactions were concluded”.
They are currently collecting material and it is still unclear if charges will eventually be pressed. There is no doubt that prices have been changed: this is not only evident from what clients show, but also from the broker’s statements.
The legality of repricing is disputed. Do extreme cases allow for adjustments on software crashes? It is an open question.
This is not a big surprise, especially not for Saxo Bank: the firm braced itself for lawsuits already on January 23rd. In that article, Steen Blaafalk, Saxo’s chief financial officer and head of risk management expressed willingness to be flexible with settling outstanding amounts.
Saxo Bank is one of the 5 brokers going after negative balances. There are probably more.
We think that going after negative balances is legal, but is very problematic for clients: they can lose more than they deposit, not return to the company or not open an account with the broker in the first place.
Hopefully, fair solutions will be found for everybody.