To effect a settlement of a private U.S. lawsuit accusing them of rigging an interest rate benchmark used in the $553 trillion derivatives market, seven of the world’s biggest banks have agreed to pay $324 million.

Antitrust claims against Bank of America Corp, Barclays Plc, Citigroup Inc, Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc are essentially resolved by the settlement, news of which became public just a few days ago and which requires further approval from the court.

14 banks, including those that settled, were accused of conspiring to rig the “ISDAfix” benchmark for their own gain from at least 2009 to 2012 by several pension funds and municipalities.

Swaps transactions, commercial real estate mortgages and structured debt securities are priced by companies and investors by the use of ISDAfix.

Termed as “banging the close” or the execution of rapid trades just before the rate was set each day which resulted in the British brokerage ICAP Plc to delay trades until they moved ISDAfix where they wanted, and posting rates that did not reflect market activity was among the alleged illegal activities.

$52 million from JPMorgan; $50 million each from Bank of America, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and RBS; $42 million from Citigroup and $30 million from Barclays would be the payments that has been decided under the settlement offer.

The lawyers for the plaintiffs said that the remaining defendants are BNP Paribas SA, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, HSBC Holdings Plc, Morgan Stanley, Nomura Holdings Inc, UBS AG, Wells Fargo & Co and ICAP.

There were no comments to the market rumors about the settlement from spokespeople for BNP Paribas, HSBC, Morgan Stanley and UBS. The other non-settling defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Five weeks ago, the law suit was refused to be dismissed by the U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan and the news of the settlement came after much conjecture about the fate of the lawsuit.

Barclays agreed last May to pay a $115 million fine to settle a U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission probe and the U.S. and European regulators have also examined whether ISDAfix was set properly.

A number of private lawsuits that accuses banks of conspiring to rig rate benchmarks, securities prices or commodities prices are pending in Manhattan federal court and the particular private lawsuit in question is one of the many.

The case is Alaska Electrical Pension Fund et al v. Bank of America Corp et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 14-07126.

(Adapted from Reuters)