Barclays Wins Its DOJ Gamble With $2 Billion Mortgage Settlement
- DOJ was said to originally seek $5 billion penalty in 2016
- Bank deceived investors in $31 billion of pre-crisis RMBS
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Barclays Plc agreed to pay $2 billion to settle a probe into how it sold the sort of mortgage bonds that fueled the financial crisis, securing a penalty less than half of what U.S. authorities originally demanded.
The British lender was the only bank to push back against the size of the settlement demanded by the Justice Department, prompting the prosecutor to file a lawsuit in the waning days of the Obama administration in 2016. The DOJ wanted a fine of about $5 billion, but the bank refused to pay any more than $2 billion, Bloomberg news reported in 2016.