Banks, Securities Fraud | featured news

Goldman Sachs Group Inc could release documents to counter a Senate subcommittee report that said the bank misled clients about mortgage-linked securities, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

An arbitration panel ordered Citigroup Inc to pay a group of investors $54.1 million for losses from municipal securities funds that cratered between 2007 and 2008, the biggest award yet involving the funds in a long series of legal claims against the bank.

A Senate investigation into the financial crisis has found that Goldman Sachs, the storied Wall Street investment bank, sought to profit from the historic decline in housing prices by betting against the US mortgage market.

Goldman Sachs said Tuesday its first-quarter earnings almost doubled to $3.3 billion as its trading business again surpassed the rest of the financial industry. A top lawyer for the bank, which is facing civil fraud charges, said Goldman would "never intentionally mislead anyone."

In a civil suit filed Friday, the S.E.C. accused the investment bank of securities fraud over a deal in which Goldman profited from bets against products it sold to customers.

Attorney General Jerry Brown says customers were misled into believing that auction-rate securities were safe. Wells Fargo disputes that, and says it aided customers hit by the collapse of the market.

California today sued investment subsidiaries of Wells Fargo & Co.