(Reuters) -Barclays Plc and an affiliate on Thursday agreed to pay $361 million to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges connected to the unregistered offer and sale of “an unprecedented amount” of securities, in breach of U.S. rules.
According to the findings of SEC order, which Barclays did not admit or deny, an affiliate of the British bank offered and sold approximately $17.7 billion of securities in unregistered transactions after it lost its status as a “well-known seasoned issuer” in 2017.
The firm failed to implement any internal controls to track such transactions in real time, the SEC said.
“While we acknowledge Barclays’ efforts to identify, disclose and remediate this conduct, the control deficiencies and the scope of the conduct at issue here was simply staggering,” Gurbir Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said in a statement.
Barclays and affiliate Barclays Bank PLC (BBPLC) agreed to pay a $200 million civil penalty and BBPLC additionally agreed to pay disgorgement and prejudgment interest of more than $161 million, which was satisfied by a buyback offer the firm made to investors in the unregistered offerings.
Barclays said in July its profit for the first six months of the year was dented by a 1.9 billion pound ($2.11 billion) hit for regulatory missteps, including having to buy back billions of dollars of securities the bank sold in error, overshadowing an otherwise solid performance.
($1 = 0.9013 pounds)
(Reporting by John McCrank in New York and Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Tim Ahmann and Deepa Babington)
