Goldman ordered to speed up disclosure of profits on Libya trades

LONDON (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs has been ordered to divulge earlier than planned the profits it made on trades it carried out for Libya's sovereign wealth fund, at the centre of a $1 billion legal battle, a representative of the fund told Reuters on Tuesday. In a ruling on Monday by the High Court in London, a judge ordered the Wall Street bank to expedite the release of the profit figures, rather than deliver them at the Feb. 20 standard disclosure deadline, a spokesman for the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) said. The bank declined comment on Tuesday. It has previously said it believes the case is without merit. In court documents, lawyers for Goldman have argued that the trades turned sour because of the collapse of financial markets. The court ruling came after the latest hearing in the case, brought by the LIA earlier this year, which alleges Goldman exploited a position of trust by encouraging it to invest more than $1 billion in a series of equity derivatives trades that expired as worthless in 2011. The LIA estimates Goldman made "substantial and unusually high" profit of around $350 million on the trades, which were executed in 2008, court documents show. (Reporting by Clare Hutchison; Editing by David Holmes)