By Christina Rexrode 

Bank of America Corp. has agreed to pay $180 million to settle a lawsuit by private investors who accused the bank and others of manipulating foreign-exchange rates.

The bank's decision comes after rivals J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and UBS AG had agreed to settle with the same investors. Other banks, including Citigroup Inc. and Barclays PLC, are expected to settle soon, according to people familiar with the situation.

Regulators around the world have been examining whether banks improperly manipulated the forex rates, and half a dozen banks settled with U.S. and U.K. regulators in November. At the time, Bank of America paid $250 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, though its U.S. rivals Citigroup and J.P. Morgan paid more than $1 billion each in fines to various regulators.

Other multinational banks are also expected to settle this year with the Justice Department and the Federal Reserve, people familiar with the situation have said.

Bank of America made its latest disclosure in a regulatory filing Wednesday. It said that the cost of settling the lawsuit would be covered by existing reserves.

The settlement announced Wednesday involves a lawsuit filed in late 2013 by pension funds and other investors. The suit accused traders at a dozen banks of improperly sharing confidential information about their clients' orders via electronic chat rooms, then using that information to make money at the expense of their clients.

Connecticut-based law firm Scott + Scott, which is representing investors, had announced an agreement in principle with Bank of America earlier this month but didn't disclose an amount. The settlements have been getting increasingly bigger. J.P. Morgan earlier agreed to pay $99.5 million, and UBS agreed to pay $135 million. They, like Bank of America, also agreed to cooperate with the law firms' investigations into other banks.

The lawsuit, which was filed by investors including the Oklahoma firefighters pension fund and the city of Philadelphia pension fund, represents only a portion of global banks' foreign-exchange liabilities.

The other banks that were sued include BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., HSBC Holdings PLC, Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC.

Citigroup Inc. and Barclays PLC were expected to pay as much as $800 million combined to settle its lawsuit with investors, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. Settling with private investors while negotiating with the Justice Department and regulators may be a strategy by the banks to minimize the damage from both, experts said at the time.

Write to Christina Rexrode at christina.rexrode@wsj.com

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