Investment banks and other defendants will pay a combined $651m (€536m) to a group of institutional investors who lost money in the 2002 collapse of WorldCom, the telecommunications company.

Most of the settlement will be paid by WorldCom's former investment banks, primarily Citigroup and JP Morgan, that underwrote WorldCom securities, according to a statement from Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins of San Diego, the plaintiffs' law firm.