Procter & Gamble Co. has amended its lawsuit against Bankers Trust New York Corp. to include a second derivatives transaction involving German marks.
Procter & Gamble also made additional claims under federal securities law concerning Bankers Trust's alleged failure to disclose information on the transactions.
The amended complaint seeks an additional $65 million in compensatory damages, bringing total damages being claimed to $195 million.
The move, the latest development in a controversy over sales practices that has swirled around Bankers Trust's derivatives group for much of the past year, was not entirely unexpected. The Cincinnati-based consumer products company said when it filed its original suit against the bank last October that it was considering adding the German mark swap to its complaint.
The original suit only involved one derivatives transaction - a swap tied to the rates on five-year and 30-year Treasuries.
The German mark swap, according to the complaint, was a proprietary deal Bankers Trust developed for Procter & Gamble that was supposed to "overlay" an existing swap and provide the company with a slightly lower net interest rate.
At press time, no one from Bankers Trust was available to comment on the amended suit.
Edwin L. Artzt, chairman and chief executive of P&G, said new information came to light.
"We're taking action now because conversations taped by Bankers Trust between Bankers Trust and P&G were recently made available to us and have confirmed what our own internal investigation had concluded."
