Bloomberg-

If HSBC Holdings Plc, UBS Group AG and Wells Fargo & Co. were concerned that the Trump administration might continue the big-ticket bank penalties of the Obama era, there are mounting signs that they need not be.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc says it has reached a tentative deal with the Justice Department to pay $4.9 billion to resolve an investigation into its sale of toxic mortgage-backed securities a decade ago. The Justice Department, without citing a figure, confirmed a pact was near.

The RBS penalty would be about half of what many analysts had expected the bank to pay. Those estimates were based, in part, on the size of the bank’s MBS portfolio, which was larger than most. An RBS deal for under $5 billion would be the first time that a mortgage settlement with the Justice Department was lower than the same bank’s penalty to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

[BLOOMBERG]

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