Credit Suisse Group AG and Barclays PLC agreed to pay $154.3 million combined to settle investigations by regulators into their “dark pools,” officials said, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The record settlements are with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York attorney general. The SEC “will continue to shed light on dark pools to better protect investors,” the agency’s chairman, Mary Jo White, said in the statement. The agreements are the biggest and second-biggest settlements related to dark pools, which are privately run stock-trading venues that have come under greater scrutiny in the past several years. Regulators and other critics have accused dark pools of providing unfair advantages to professional traders at the expense of big institutions.
