Fabrice Tourre, the only Goldman Sachs banker named as a defendant in the US fraud lawsuit relating to a controversial $1bn parcel of sub-prime debt, has yet to settle with the US financial regulator.

Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank, on Thursday agreed to pay a record $550m (£356m) fine to the US Securities and Exchange Commission after admitting that marketing material linked to the package of sub-prime mortgages was "incomplete".

The 31-year-old has denied SEC charges of misleading investors. He was the creator of a complex mortgage-linked package called Abacus 2007-AC1, the marketing of which was central to the regulator's investigation.

Mr Tourre hit the headlines over the candid private emails he had sent in 2007 to his girlfriend, describing his fears about the housing market and the financial packages he was creating. They were revealed in the regulator's complaint.

One of the more memorable emails was sent on January 23, 2007. In it he shared his apparently true feelings on the state of the US housing market: “More and more leverage in the system. The whole building is about to collapse anytime now ... Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab ... standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implication of those monstruosities [sic]!!!”

A month later, on February 26, the French-born banker produced another document, a 65-page “flip book” that contained details of a $1bn investment fund, designed to be given to potential investors. The fund was a synthetic collateralised debt obligation (CDO) – a parcel of sub-prime mortgages - called Abacus 2007-AC1.

He revealed his feelings about Abacus in June 2007 when he wrote to his girlfriend: "Just made it to the country of your favorite clients [Belgians]!!! I'm [sic] managed to sell a few abacus bonds to widows and orphans that I ran into at the airport...".

Mr Tourre is on indefinite leave at Goldman. He has been stripped of his licence to work in the City of London.

Telegraph.co.uk

And I thought it was just us Brits who were soft on banks.