Barclays fined $150 million in latest forex probe

Barclays has been fined an additional $150m (£99m) by US regulators for using its forex platform to reject unprofitable trades.

As part of the settlement Barclays will also terminate its global head of electronic fixed income, currencies and commodities.

The bank was accused of using a feature called “Last Look” on its forex trading platform, which would automatically reject unprofitable client orders. Barclays used computer algorithms to hold trades for milliseconds. If a trade moved in favour of the bank, the trade went through, but if the client benefited then the trade was rejected.

Essentially the bank was accused of putting the its own interests ahead of clients’.

Barclays said that the penalty will be reflected in its fourth quarter results.

Anthony Albanese, acting superintendent of financial services of the New York State Department of Financial Services, said: “We are pleased that Barclays worked with us to resolve this matter.

“This case highlights the need for better oversight and action to help prevent the misuse of automated, electronic trading platforms on Wall Street, which is a wider industry issue that requires serious additional scrutiny.”

Earlier this year in May the British banking giant was fined $2.4 billion for its role in manipulating the foreign exchange market.

Barclays said in a statement that it “continues to co-operate with other ongoing investigations and to manage related litigation risks as previously disclosed”.