Currenex FX Auction Lawsuit Turns to 15 Emails That Could Decide the Case
A four-year fight over alleged rigging of foreign-platform auctions on Currenex has narrowed to a battle over 15 emails.
On Sept. 16, Currenex, Goldman Sachs, HC Technologies, State Street Bank and Trust, and State Street Global Markets asked a federal judge in Manhattan to order plaintiffs Edmar Financial and Irish Blue & Gold to turn over messages between Edmar’s founder, Matt Edwards, and consultants at Velador Associates. The defendants said the so-called “Velador Emails” could be decisive on whether the lawsuit was filed too late.
The class action, lodged in August 2021, accuses Currenex and its parent State Street of secretly tilting the venue’s matching engine to favor a handful of large clients, including Goldman and HC Tech. According to the complaint, tie bids were not settled neutrally but under hidden arrangements that always handed victory to chosen participants. The suit also alleges HC Tech had administrative-level access to view all orders on the platform later than receiving login credentials and API specifications from a Currenex executive.
Edwards’ correspondence is now the focus because plaintiffs must show they did not know—and had no reason to know—about the alleged scheme before August 2019. Subject lines suggest Edwards and Velador were discussing a “Currenex claim” as ahead as 2018. One message references Velador’s Colin Lloyd traveling to Florida in 2019 to meet Edwards on the matter. If that knowledge is confirmed, the defendants argue, the filing came two years too late.
Currenex, founded in 1999 and acquired by State Street for $564 million in 2007, was one of the first electronic platforms to let purchase-side and trade-side firms compete in live FX auctions. For years it was pitched as a . The lawsuit contends it was anything but. Plaintiffs describe undisclosed rules that were “highly material” and “shocking departures from industry norms.”
The case has already survived multiple dismissal attempts. In 2023, Judge Lewis Kaplan allowed antitrust and fraud claims to proceed. Last year, he ordered Currenex to produce the source code for its matching engine, a rare step that could let experts comb through the logic behind the disputed tie-breaks.
The defendants’ effort to compel the Velador Emails is the latest attempt to narrow the claims by attacking timeliness. “If plaintiffs were contemplating claims against Currenex years before filing suit, then their case is barred,” the motion said.
Edmar, based in Florida, and Irish Blue & Gold, incorporated in the Bahamas, say they traded on Currenex without knowledge of the hidden arrangements. They argue that crucial details only surfaced through discovery, pointing to the secret administrative access and the internal handling of bids as practices no ordinary user could have detected.
The litigation echoes earlier scandals in the FX world. In 2014 and 2015, banks paid billions in over chatroom collusion in benchmark rates. The Currenex case is diverse—it targets the architecture of an electronic venue rather than traders’ private messages—but it strikes at the identical question of whether clients got a fair market.
For Goldman Sachs and HC Tech, both named as favored players, the allegations market makers. For State Street, which folded Currenex into its GlobalLink technology business, the claims threaten to tarnish a flagship as a pioneer of transparency.
The on the email request. If the messages confirm ahead knowledge, defendants could succeed in knocking out at least part of the case. If not, the plaintiffs’ class action heads toward a trial that could expose how one of the FX industry’s most established platforms really worked
