This happened today too: Goldman to pay $550M to settle civil fraud charges

[vaberella]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Goldman Sachs & Co. has agreed to pay $550 million to settle civil fraud charges that the Wall Street giant misled buyers of mortgage-related investments.

The settlement was announced by the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, hours after Congress gave final approval to the stiffest restrictions on banks and Wall Street since the Great Depression.

The deal calls for Goldman to pay the SEC fines of $300 million. The rest of the money will go to compensate those who lost money on their investments.

The penalty was the largest against a financial company in SEC history. The settlement amounts to less than 5 percent of Goldman's 2009 net income of $12.2 billion after payment of dividends to preferred shareholders -- or a little more than two weeks of net income.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Goldman-to-pay-550M-to-settle-apf-2667561600.html?x=0

Although 5% is not enough...a nice 15-20% would have been nice.

[vaberella]

1. Deciding to kick my own post.

Thanks for the recs guys...I'd rec it if anyone else posted it too.

[Spazito]

2. The bonus is this does not, in any way, preclude civil or criminal charges...

being laid upon employees of GS nor does it stop the other ongoing SEC investigations regarding GS.

[vaberella]

3. Yup, yup. It's great stuff. I'm so happy. n/t