Barclays has agreed to pay $50m to settle a US lawsuit accusing it of rigging its foreign exchange trading system to reject client orders that would be unprofitable for the UK bank; this comes three months after the bank agreed to pay $150m and fire a senior electronic trading official to resolve similar claims by the New York State Department of Financial Services. The settlement is subject to court approval, but will allow Barclays, which was fined £290m, to avoid further legal action in the US.
Barclays has agreed to pay $50m to settle a US lawsuit accusing it of rigging its foreign exchange trading system to reject client orders that would be unprofitable for the UK bank; this comes three months after the bank agreed to pay $150m and fire a senior electronic trading official to resolve similar claims by the New York State Department of Financial Services. The lawsuit arose from "Last Look", a Barclays trading system feature meant to deter traders from exploiting tiny delays, often just a few milliseconds, in the flow of information within the marketplace; however, it has been claimed that Barclays used Last Look as a "general filter" to weed out unprofitable trades.