US dark pools case crosses legal limits: Barclays

New York

BARCLAYS plc urged a New York court to toss the state attorney-general's fraud case over how the bank ran its private US trading venue, saying that the case oversteps state securities laws and offers no proof that any investors were hurt.

New York attorney-general Eric Schneiderman filed a lawsuit on June 25 accusing the London-based bank of giving an unfair edge to high-frequency traders and lying to other customers about it. It is the highest-profile case in a recent raft of investigations by authorities into the fairness of high-speed, automated trading practices and alternative trading systems, or "dark pools".