The Justice Department's effort to secure a guilty plea from Credit Suisse Group AG in coming days is expected to kick off a number of multibillion-dollar bank settlements, in what may be Attorney General Eric Holder's last push to pursue Wall Street for past conduct, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Justice Department officials met with Bank of America Corp. last Thursday in a bid to hammer out a multibillion-dollar settlement related to the bank's handling of mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. Later this month, Citigroup Inc. will meet with department lawyers to discuss a settlement stemming from an investigation into mortgage-backed securities that racked up large losses. Holder earlier this month listened to entreaties from European government officials weighing in on behalf of their home-country banks. On May 2, the attorney general met with a minister from Switzerland to talk about the case against Credit Suisse for allegedly helping wealthy Americans evade taxes. Later that same day, he took a phone call from France's finance minister about the U.S. investigation of BNP Paribas SA for allegedly evading U.S. sanctions on such nations as Iran.
