Banks' Ability to Delay Currency Trades May Not Be Fair

New York banking regulator Benjamin Lawsky said his agency’s probe of electronic currency trading focuses in part on a practice known as “last look,” a programming feature designed to let banks delay execution of orders to avoid getting burned on price swings.

“We’re concerned, at least, that there may be some issues there in terms of manipulation,” Lawsky, head of the New York Department of Financial Services, said Thursday in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop with Betty Liu.” He’s trying to determine whether any banks abused last looks to ensure they profited at the expense of customers.