Barclays hit by $361 million penalty over issuance of securities

(Corrects headline and first paragraph to make clear $361 million was size of penalty, not payment)

(Reuters) - British bank Barclays agreed to a $361 million penalty over internal control failures related to the unregistered offer and sale of "an unprecedented amount" of securities, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Thursday.

"While we acknowledge Barclays’ efforts to identify, disclose and remediate this conduct, the control deficiencies and the scope of the conduct at issue here was simply staggering," the director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, Gurbir Grewal, said in a news release.

(The story corrects headline and first paragraph to make clear that $361 million was the size of penalty, not payment)

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; writing by Costas Pitas; editing by Tim Ahmann)