Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the world’s most profitable securities firm before the financial crisis, said it’s under investigation by regulators probing the potential manipulation of foreign-exchange rates.

Currencies and commodities were added to a list of financial products and related activities that are subject to investigation, according to a regulatory filing published by the New York-based company today. The filing also added options trading and technology systems and controls to the list.

Investigators are looking at the firm’s “trading activities and communications in connection with the establishment of benchmark rates,” Goldman Sachs said in the filing. The company “is cooperating with all such regulatory investigations and reviews.”

At least eight banks including Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have said they are being investigated by authorities examining the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign-exchange market and are co-operating. Citigroup, JPMorgan and Barclays Plc have suspended or put on leave some of their most senior currency traders amid the inquiry. No one has been accused of wrongdoing.

The U.S. Federal Reserve is examining legal and regulatory exemptions that have allowed banks including Goldman Sachs to trade and own raw materials such as oil, coal and metals, a person with knowledge of the matter said last month.

Shared Information

Bloomberg News reported in June that currency dealers in the industry said they shared information about their positions through instant messages, executed their own trades before client orders and sought to manipulate the benchmark WM/Reuters rates by pushing through trades before and during the 60-second windows when the benchmarks are set.

The WM/Reuters rates determine what many pension funds and money managers pay for their foreign exchange and are used by index providers such as FTSE Group and MSCI Inc. to calculate daily valuations of indexes that span multiple currencies. Even small movements could affect the value of what Morningstar Inc. estimates is $3.6 trillion in funds including pension and savings accounts that track global indexes.

Because banks agree with clients to trade at the WM/Reuters rates, regardless of later moves, dealers are at risk of losses if the market moves against them.

The rates are published hourly for 160 currencies and half- hourly for the 21 most-traded. They are the median of all trades in a minute-long period starting 30 seconds before the beginning of each half-hour. Rates for less-widely traded currencies are based on quotes during a two-minute window.

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