July 17 (Reuters) - Two prominent U.S. law firms that

said they invested more than $100 million in attorney time

litigating a complex antitrust case against major banks were

awarded $35 million in legal fees on Thursday by a judge in

Manhattan.

U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken's order approved the full

amount in fees that law firms Cohen Milstein and Quinn Emanuel

Urquhart & Sullivan sought for their work in the litigation,

which netted $71 million in settlements. The judge also

separately granted $23 million in expenses requested by the

firms.

In their fee request in April, the firms said receiving the

requested amount would still leave them with what they described

as "substantial losses."

Cohen Milstein and Quinn Emanuel represented investors who

accused Credit Suisse, Bank of America ( BAC ), Goldman Sachs ( GS )

, JPMorgan Chase ( JPM ) and other banks of conspiring to

rig the multitrillion-dollar market for interest rate swaps.

Lead attorneys for the investors had no immediate comment.

Bank of America ( BAC ), JPMorgan ( JPM ), Goldman Sachs ( GS ) and Credit Suisse,

now part of UBS, declined to comment. The banks and other

defendants denied any wrongdoing.

In 2022, Credit Suisse agreed to pay $25 million to settle

investors' claims.

Oetken in December 2023 refused to certify the investors'

lawsuit as a class action, limiting the potential damages in the

case.

The investors' appeal was pending when they struck a final

settlement with the remaining banks for a combined $46 million

to resolve the claims against them.

The law firms told Oetken that $35 million was "a small

fraction of the huge amounts that class counsel invested in this

case."

In his fee order, Oetken said that there was a significant

risk the investors would have recovered less or nothing at all

without the settlements.

The case is In re: Interest Rate Swaps Antitrust Litigation,

U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No.

16-md-02704.

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