By Dave Michaels
WASHINGTON — Many of Wall Street’s biggest banks are nearing agreements to pay as much as $200 million each and admit that their employees’ use of personal messaging apps such as WhatsApp violated regulatory requirements, according to people familiar with the matter.
The total amount of fines will likely top $1 billion, the people said, and will be announced by the end of September. The roster of banks poised to pay $200 million each includes Bank of America Corp. /zigman2/quotes/200894270/composite BAC -0.16% , Barclays PLC /zigman2/quotes/206581728/composite BCS +0.43% , Citigroup Inc. /zigman2/quotes/207741460/composite C +2.48% , Deutsche Bank AG /zigman2/quotes/203042512/composite DB -0.08% , Goldman Sachs Group Inc. /zigman2/quotes/209237603/composite GS +0.06% , and Morgan Stanley /zigman2/quotes/209104354/composite MS -0.95% and UBS Group AG /zigman2/quotes/206172872/composite UBS +0.40% , the people said. Jefferies Financial Group Inc. /zigman2/quotes/206157580/composite JEF -1.17% and Nomura Holdings Inc. /zigman2/quotes/207276383/composite NMR +1.47% are nearing settlements with regulators but will pay lower fines, reflecting their smaller size, the people said.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission plan to announce the deals with the banks by Sept. 30, the end of the government’s current fiscal year. That would put the penalties in the government’s annual enforcement statistics.
Spokesmen for the SEC and CFTC declined to comment. Spokespeople for the banks declined to comment. A spokesman for UBS couldn’t be reached.
An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com .
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