“Bloomberg – Barclays Plc agreed to pay $2 billion in civil penalties to settle a U.S. investigation into its marketing of residential mortgage-backed securities between 2005 and 2007.”
The gift that keeps on giving: the 2008 financial crisis. While nobody wants to pony up $2B for alleged misdeeds, the news is actually great for Barclays as this settlement resolves all of their outstanding DoJ suits. They also nabbed two MDs for $2M to drop charges against them as well.
That said, can we talk about financial crisis litigation for a second? If you ever wanted to know how long it would take for armies of corporate lawyers and the U.S. gov’t to settle dozens of lawsuits over billions of dollars worth of securitizations, the answer is: no idea. We’re ten years removed from the crisis and still hammering out the details on settlements (no admission of guilt, of course!), and I’m sure there are more to come. I did find this little piece on Reuters referencing a BCG whitepaper where they estimate that global banks have paid $321B in penalties since the crisis (so more like $323B after this latest Barclays donation). That is just a shitload of money that I’m sure was put to great use by governments around the world.
Anyway – let’s all get a slow clap going for Barclays as they wrap up the North American leg of their financial crisis litigation tour. Best of luck to Bob Diamond as well, pretty sure he’s been relegated to conducting LBOs in Africa or something.