Pressure on Goldman Sachs mounted yesterday as UK prime minister Gordon Brown attacked the “moral bankruptcy” revealed by the Securities and Exchange Commission's fraud charges, while the gulf between the bank and the regulator widened with revelations that the two sides never discussed a settlement.

The lack of settlement talks in the nine months since the SEC formally told Goldman it wanted to press charges is unusual and underlines the hard line taken by both the authorities and the bank in this case.

The SEC filed civil charges against Goldman and one of its vice-presidents on Friday, accusing them of failing to disclose that in 2007 Paulson & Co, a hedge fund, had a major role in structuring a mortgage-backed collaterised debt obligation so that it could bet against it.