Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said it agreed to settle a US probe into its handling of mortgage-backed securities for about $5.1 billion, cutting fourth-quarter profit by about $1.5 billion and closing out a year of record legal and litigation costs, Bloomberg reported. The proposed deal, which the bank announced in a statement Thursday, would be the latest multibillion-dollar settlement resulting from the government’s push to hold Wall Street firms to account for creating and selling subprime mortgage bonds that helped spur the 2008 financial crisis. Authorities have already penalized the three biggest US banks–JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc.–more than $37 billion in the form of cash and consumer relief.
