Wall Street’s looking a lot like a crime scene, with a growing number of suspects lining the street.
Goldman Sachs is the latest one to feel the heat, revealing on Friday that it’s being investigated for its high-frequency trading platform and whether its hiring practices violated federal laws, the bank said in a regulatory filing.
The bank, led by CEO Lloyd Blankfein, is the latest to go under the government’s microscope for possible wrongdoing — joining Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas and others.
Regulators are investigating the biggest banks at a rate that rivals any since the 1980s, lawyers say, in an attempt to show that no lender is too big, too fast, or too complex to jail.
“There’s an increase of both actions against banks and the magnitude of some of them,” said one lawyer, who didn’t want to speak on the record.
Goldman is being investigated for “market manipulation and insider trading” for its HFT platforms, according to the bank’s filings.
It’s also being probed over whether it has violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with its hiring practices, according to the same filings.
Michael DuVally, a spokesman for Goldman, declined to comment.
The effect of the investigations is that Wall Street is spooked.
Goldman hiked the amount it set aside for litigation costs last quarter to $115 million from $110 million in the year-ago period.
Other banks under the gun this week are Credit Suisse, for allegedly setting up tax shelters, and BNP Paribas, for dealing with blacklisted states like Iran and Sudan, according to people with direct knowledge of the talks.