Legal experts will argue over who got the best deal – Goldman Sachs or the regulators – in the record fraud settlement announced last Thursday (15 July). But one thing seems certain – the investing public didn't.

The lawyers at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) went into negotiations seeking a record penalty, perhaps as high as $1bn (£654m), according to Wall Street reports. It also wanted Goldman to plead guilty to at least one count of failure to disclose material information to investors in one of its subprime mortgage deals, sources said.

In contrast, Goldman wanted to avoid any guilty plea. It also sought a global settlement that would end all SEC and criminal inquiries of any other subprime or other questionable transactions.

Both Goldman and the SEC got a little and gave a little in the settlement, which still must be approved by a federal judge.

Instead of $1bn, Goldman general counsel Gregory Palm agreed that Goldman would pay a total of $550m (£360m) – $15m (£9.8m) in disgorgement of profits and $535m (£350m) in civil penalties.

That allowed the SEC's director of enforcement, Robert Khuzami, to triumphantly announce, "Half a billion dollars is the largest penalty ever assessed against a financial services firm in the history of the SEC."

But the amount pales in comparison to Goldman's more than $13bn (£8.5bn) profits last year, as well as to the $13bn of taxpayer money the investment company received through the US Government's bailout of AIG in late 2008. The penalty also represents only about half of the estimated $1bn the SEC had alleged that investors had lost in the subprime deal.

Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University and a former Federal Reserve lawyer, told The New York Times that the dollar amount would not dent the public anger at the banks.

You have to consider the symbolism of the SEC's case," Hurley told the Times. "The public wanted to see either more financial pain or actually have a trial."

On another front, Goldman won its fight to avoid a guilty plea in the settlement. The SEC backed down and allowed the company to "neither confirm nor deny" the charges in the settlement. That concession will certainly help the company as it faces a horde of shareholder and derivative suits.

But the SEC added several qualifiers. For example, in future proceedings with the agency, Goldman cannot deny the allegations of fraud in the complaint.

And the agency forced Goldman to "acknowledge" that the marketing materials for the deal "contained incomplete information." The company also had to admit that "it was a mistake" for the materials to fail to disclose that the interests of one party who helped shape the deal were adverse to the investors.

It also had to sign a consent agreement not to withhold material facts from investors in the future, and to reform how it reviews and approves offerings of mortgage securities.

Significantly, Goldman lost its bid for a global settlement of all civil and criminal investigations. The settlement states that it "resolves only the claims asserted against Defendant in this civil proceeding."

So, who really got the best of the SEC-Goldman deal? Immediately after the settlement was announced, Goldman's shares jumped by 5%. That tells you who Wall Street thinks came out on top – the bankers.

And a couple of foreign banks were also likely to be pleased with the outcome.

The settlement requires that part of the penalty will be used to repay $100m (£65m) to the Royal Bank of Scotland and $150m (£98m) to Germany's Deutsche Industriebank. The two banks had lost those amounts as investors in the subprime deal.

The other $300m (£196m) in penalties goes to the US Treasury which may or may not use it to reimburse harmed investors, according to the settlement.

Khuzami called the Goldman settlement a "stark lesson" for Wall Street. But maybe it is an even starker lesson for the individual investing public, who lost some $750m (£491m) in the subprime deal and may or may not get a dime back from the government.

This article first appeared on Corporate Counsel, a US affiliate title of Legal Week.