A Milan court has cleared four banks – Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank – and six of their employees of charges of market rigging related to the collapse of Parmalat in 2003.
Concluding a three-year, high-profile trial, the judges’ ruling on Monday led to celebrations among defence lawyers, but also to angry protests from consumer groups representing more than 100,000 retail investors who lost their savings in the €14bn ($20bn) collapse of the Italian food and dairy group.
The prosecution had requested in January that the banks should have €120m of their profits impounded for allegedly misleading investors by helping to inflate Parmalat’s share price.