Deutsche Bank paying $55m settlement on incorrect reports

Germany's Deutsche Bank AG has agreed to pay $55 million to settle civil charges of filing incorrect reports during the financial crisis that downplayed risks of huge losses.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission announced the settlement on Tuesday with the big German bank, which is a prominent institution on Wall Street. Deutsche Bank neither admitted nor denied the allegations but did agree to refrain from future violations of the securities laws.

The SEC said that in two quarterly reports in 2008 and 2009, Deutsche Bank inflated the value of its transactions designed to hedge against losses on securities in the credit markets, which were turbulent at the time. That created a "gap risk" worth billions of dollars that wasn't properly taken into account in the bank's reports, the agency said.