S&L damages

A US jury has ordered the chief of the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan bank, Charles Keating, and three co-defendants to pay dollars 2.1bn ( pounds 1.1bn) in damages for defrauding thousands of investors.

The damages - nearly twice what the plaintiffs had sued for - were the largest awarded in the series of scandals that have rocked the US banking and financial industry since the mid- Eighties.