COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Swedish pension fund provider Alecta said on Tuesday it will lead a class action lawsuit against First Republic Bank, with the aim of recovering as much as possible of the capital that investors lost when the U.S. niche bank collapsed this year.
U.S. regulators on May 1 seized First Republic Bank and sold its assets to JPMorgan Chase & Co, in a deal to resolve the largest U.S. bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis and draw a line under a lingering banking turmoil.
Sweden’s largest pension fund provider lost 19.6 billion crowns ($1.92 billion) from share holdings in First Republic Bank, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
“We have a duty to take the legal measures we can to recover as much of the capital as possible after the collapse of First Republic,” Alecta CEO Peder Hasslev, said in a statement.
The process is being conducted with the help of U.S. litigation lawyers, Alecta said.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and Swedish pension fund AP7 were last week named co-lead plaintiffs in an ongoing class action relating to the now-bankrupt Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).
(Reporting by Louise Breusch Rasmussen, editing by Terje Solsvik)
