Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $550m (£366m) to settle fraud charges brought against the bank by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), writes The American Lawyer.

The SEC on Thursday (15 July) confirmed the terms of its agreement with Goldman with the bank to pay $300m (£200m) in fines to the Treasury Department and another $250m (£166m) in restitution to investors.

Robert Khuzami (pictured), director of the SEC's division of enforcement, said that the settlement by Goldman should serve as "a stark lesson to Wall Street firms that no product is too complex, and no investor too sophisticated, to avoid a heavy price if a firm violates the fundamental principles of honest treatment and fair dealing."

Goldman assembled a formidable legal team led by Sullivan & Cromwell's Richard Klapper and Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom's Gregory Craig to defend itself in the case.

Allen & Overy New York litigation partner Pamela Chepiga is advising Fabrice Tourre, a Goldman vice president who helped create and sell the mortgage-backed investments at the heart of the probe.

The settlement will be seen by financial services lawyers as further illustration of the tougher enforcement stance from bodies like the SEC and the Financial Services Authority as regulators try to clamp down on the excesses of the banking industry.

The settlement represents the largest penalty ever paid by a Wall Street firm and comes three months after the SEC jolted the markets by filing the civil suit accusing Goldman of securities fraud.

The suit claimed that Goldman created and sold a collateralised debt obligation (CDO) secretly designed to fail after it was paid $15m (£9.8m) by the hedge fund Paulson to structure the CDO specifically to allow it to bet on the securities falling in value.

The SEC claims that while other investors lost almost $1bn (£656m) on the CDO, Paulson earned almost $1bn by betting against it. The SEC's case turned on whether Goldman had misrepresented the nature of the CDO and Paulson role in its creation to investors.

"In agreeing to the SEC's largest-ever penalty paid by a Wall Street firm, Goldman also acknowledged that its marketing materials for the subprime product contained incomplete information," said the regulator in a statement.

Goldman declined to comment

The American Lawyer is a US affiliate title of Legal Week.