Goldman Sachs has been fined €6.63m (£5.7m) by the European Central Bank for underreporting corporate credit risk on its balance sheet.

The US financial giant said in a statement it had "closely cooperated with the ECB" and "taken all necessary steps" to resolve the issue, Reuters reported on Monday (16 May).

According to the ECB, Goldman Sachs Bank Europe made errors in eight consecutive quarters in 2019 to 2021, where it gave a lower risk to some corporate exposures than the rules require.

A failure of internal controls meant the bank missed the errors, the ECB said.

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"The bank reported wrongly calculated figures to the ECB, therefore preventing the ECB from having a comprehensive view of its risk profile," it added in a statement.

A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs told Reuters the bank recognised "the critical importance of [its] regulatory reporting obligations" and had "fully" remedied them.

Capital requirements rules are based on ‘risk weights' to work out how much a bank should hold in capital to cover its risks.

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Goldman Sachs gave lower risk weights than was necessary to some assets, meaning it could report higher capital ratios than was actually the case, the ECB found.

The ECB classified the breach as "severe", the third most serious category out of five.

Goldman Sachs could still challenge the ECB's decision before the Court of Justice of the European Union.