Loreley Financing (Jersey) No. 3 Ltd. v. Citigroup Global Markets Inc.

119 A.D.3d 136, 987 N.Y.S.2d 299

This text of 119 A.D.3d 136 (Loreley Financing (Jersey) No. 3 Ltd. v. Citigroup Global Markets Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Loreley Financing (Jersey) No. 3 Ltd. v. Citigroup Global Markets Inc., 119 A.D.3d 136, 987 N.Y.S.2d 299 (N.Y. Ct. App. 2014).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

Renwick, J.

This appeal stems from an action alleging fraud with respect to an investment bank’s sale of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) which depended upon the positive performance of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS). The main issue here is whether the seller’s disclaimers and disclosures in the offering documents preclude the purchasers from establishing the reasonable reliance element of the fraud claim. Usually, comprehensive disclaimers contained in carefully drafted documents executed by sophisticated commercial parties are sufficient to insulate sellers from tort liability (see e.g. HSH Nordbank AG v UBS AG, 95 AD3d 185 [1st Dept 2012]). But there is a limit to the efficacy of those disclaimers, as this case aptly demonstrates.

Plaintiffs Loreley Financing Ltd.(s) (Jersey No. 3 Ltd., No. 5 Ltd., No. 6 Ltd., No. 7 Ltd., No. 25 Ltd., No. 27 Ltd., No. 29 Ltd., No. 31 Ltd., and No. 32 Ltd.) are companies organized under the laws of Jersey, Channel Islands. Between September 2006 and June 2007, through their investment advisors, non-parties IKB Deutsche Industries Bank AG and IKB Credit Assets Management GmbH, plaintiffs invested in nearly $1 billion of CDOs backed by RMBS: Lacerta, Jackson, Cookson, Pinnacle Peak, ABSynth and Plettenberg Bay. At the time of these transactions, Citigroup and its affiliates were reportedly major players at multiple levels of the subprime capital market; Citigroup acted as a mortgage originator, an underwriter of subprime RMBS, and an arranger of structured finance products, like CDOs, that invested in RMBS. In this case, Citigroup’s affiliates, Citigroup Global Markets Inc. (CGMI) and Citigroup Global Markets Limited (CGML), were the underwriters and direct sellers of the Lacerta, Jackson, Cookson, Pinnacle Peak, ABSynth and Plettenberg Bay CDOs purchased by plaintiffs in 2006 and 2007.

In 2012, plaintiffs commenced this action accusing Citigroup of defrauding plaintiffs into purchasing “fraudulent [CDO] [139]*139investments which are now worthless.”1 In essence, plaintiffs accuse Citigroup of using the CDOs plaintiffs purchased to offload the risk of toxic RMBS on its books and to help preferred clients “short” the housing market. In their complaint, plaintiffs raise causes of action sounding in: (1) fraud; (2) rescission; (3) fraudulent conveyance; and (4) unjust enrichment. Subsequently, Citigroup moved to dismiss the entire action pursuant to CPLR 3211 (a) (7).2 The motion court granted in part and denied in part Citigroup’s motion, dismissing plaintiffs’ claim for rescission and fraudulent conveyance, while sustaining plaintiffs’ fraud and unjust enrichment claims.3 Citigroup appeals from the denial of the remaining claims, while plaintiffs appeal from the dismissal of the rescission claim.

We first examine Citigroup’s contentions. With regard to the fraud claim, Citigroup argues, inter alia, that it should be dismissed because it is not sufficiently detailed. Generally, in a claim for fraud, a plaintiff must allege “a misrepresentation or a material omission of fact which was false and known to be false by defendant, made for the purpose of inducing the other party to rely upon it, justifiable reliance of the other party on the misrepresentation or material omission, and injury” (Lama Holding Co. v Smith Barney, 88 NY2d 413, 421 [1996]). Furthermore, “the circumstances constituting the wrong shall be stated in detail” (CPLR 3016 [b]; see Lanzi v Brooks, 43 NY2d 778, 780 [1977] [“(CPLR 3016 [b]) requires only that the misconduct complained of be set forth in sufficient detail to clearly inform a defendant with respect to the incidents complained of’]).

[140]*140In this case, the complaint describes the alleged fraudulent conduct, as to each CDO transaction, as follows:

“From 2000 to 2006, Citigroup earned increasingly large returns from originating subprime mortgages, securitizing them into residential mortgage-backed securities (‘RMBS’), arranging CDOs, and underwriting other structured finance transactions derived from subprime mortgages. When the overheated housing market began to cool in 2006, the market for subprime-based financial products began to decline. Yet Citigroup was accustomed to these profits. In now infamous words, Citigroup’s then-CEO Chuck Prince said in July 2007, literally days before the subprime market collapse, ‘As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance,’ and added, ‘We’re still dancing.’
“By early 2007, Citigroup knew that even the most senior tranches of CDOs were far more risky than their ratings suggested. Citigroup’s peculiar knowledge was based on information on individual loan performance that was available only to financial institutions that, like Citigroup, originated subprime mortgages and securitized them into RMBS. As a result of its insider’s knowledge, Citigroup knew that the RMBS it and other major banks were packaging into CDOs included a significant percentage of subprime mortgages that violated basic underwriting standards and were likely to default— making the RMBS assets and the CDOs that rested on them far less secure than portrayed by their ratings. Rather than disclosing these material facts to investors in the deals it arranged, Citigroup concealed them so that it could offload some of the massive exposure to subprime RMBS that Citigroup carried on its own balance sheet to unsuspecting investors — while at the same time continuing to earn lucrative fees from generating CDOs — and used its position to transfer its risk to Plaintiffs and other long investors in Citigroup CDOs.
“Indeed, to continue generating outsized profits in a market that it knew, as an insider, was doomed to collapse sooner rather than later, Citigroup began arranging fraudulent CDOs for its own benefit and [141]*141for the benefit of certain preferred clients who wanted to ‘short’ the housing market (i.e., to bet that subprime securities would fail). Citigroup also used these CDOs to offload the risk of toxic RMBS and CDO assets that Citigroup carried on its own books by concealing key facts that were peculiarly within its knowledge, while at the same time knowingly misrepresenting to unsuspecting long investors that these assets were of high quality.
“For example, Citigroup colluded secretly with a now-notorious hedge fund known as Magnetar Capital LLC (‘Magnetar’) to create six of Magnetar’s infamous ‘Constellation’ CDO deals in which Magnetar secretly controlled, undisclosed to investors, critical deal features (including the choice of collateral) to further its scheme to profit from short bets against the housing market. Citigroup benefit-ted from this deceptive scheme by reaping tens of millions of dollars in fees. Working closely with Citigroup, Magnetar purchased the hard-to-sell equity tranches of these CDOs [Lacerta] (which carried the most risk) at discounted prices, while using the returns to finance inexpensive short bets against those same CDOs by secretly buying credit protection via credit default swaps (‘CDS’) on those reference portfolios, as well as CDS contracts referencing tranches of the CDOs themselves. As Magnetar and Citigroup expected, the CDS contracts generated substantial net profits for Magnetar when the CDOs failed.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Lama Holding Co. v. Smith Barney Inc.
668 N.E.2d 1370 (New York Court of Appeals, 1996)
Goldman v. Metropolitan Life Insurance
841 N.E.2d 742 (New York Court of Appeals, 2005)
Lanzi v. Brooks
373 N.E.2d 278 (New York Court of Appeals, 1977)
Rudman v. Cowles Communications, Inc.
280 N.E.2d 867 (New York Court of Appeals, 1972)
Arrington v. New York Times Co.
434 N.E.2d 1319 (New York Court of Appeals, 1982)
HSH Nordbank AG v. UBS AG
95 A.D.3d 185 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 2012)
Grumman Aerospace Corp. v. Rice
196 A.D.2d 572 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1993)
Basis Yield Alpha Fund v. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
115 A.D.3d 128 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 2014)
Jered Contracting Corp. v. New York City Transit Authority
239 N.E.2d 197 (New York Court of Appeals, 1968)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
119 A.D.3d 136, 987 N.Y.S.2d 299, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/loreley-financing-jersey-no-3-ltd-v-citigroup-global-markets-inc-nyappdiv-2014.