Ex-Credit Suisse trader pleads guilty in MBS pricing case

A former Credit Suisse Group AG trader on Friday pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in a U.S. criminal case relating to the alleged inflation of subprime mortgage bond prices.

Kareem Serageldin, the Swiss bank's former global head of structured credit, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to falsify books and records at a hearing in Manhattan federal court.

Prosecutors had accused him of artificially inflating the prices of subprime mortgage-backed bonds between August 2007 and February 2008, when housing and credit conditions were rapidly deteriorating.

(Reporting by Bernard Vaughan in New York; Writing by Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)