Barclays is to be fined £49 million for misleading investors about its US "dark pool" operations, the BBC reports. The New York Attorney General's Office has accused the bank of not making it clear to clients that particularly aggressive high-frequency traders were using the private platform. The director of the US Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement division, Andrew Ceresney, said: "Dark pools have a significant role in today's equity marketplace and the firms that run these venues must ensure that they do not make misstatements to subscribers about their material operations." HSBC will impose a hiring and pay freeze this year as part of a push to cut US$5 billion of costs, Bloomberg reports. The bank is also in the process of closing loss-making businesses and cutting job numbers. Its effort to improve earnings is being hampered by surging compliance costs. UK peer-to-peer lender RateSetter has arranged £1 billion of loans, taking just over five years to reach the milestone, CityAM reports. RateSetter has arranged 207,000 loans and has 30,000 investors using its platform.