Matt Levine, Columnist

Barclays Took a Last Look at Its FX Trades

Can't predict the future? Just wait for it to happen, and then decide what you did in the past.

November 18, 2015 at 5:36 PM UTC

Corrected

November 18, 2015 at 6:17 PM UTC

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

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It comes from this New York Department of Financial Services consent order with Barclays, which agreed to pay a $150 million fine over the "last look" function in its electronic foreign-exchange trading business.1447856617202 In a minute we can have a nice nuanced discussion about the intricacies of last look, but let me start with a very simple point, which is that if you send an e-mail like that, you will pay a nine-digit fine. I fancy myself a bit of a connoisseur of embarrassing investment bank e-mails, and that e-mail has all the hallmarks of a $150 million e-mail.1447856865560 Don't write e-mails like that. But also, don't put yourself in situations where e-mails like that might be called for.