In August the bank was hit with a $340 million penalty by the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS), which accused it of falsifying thousands of Swift wire payment directions to help hide $250 billion in transactions linked to Iran.

Standard Chartered, said the DFS, "schemed" with the Iranian government for nearly 10 years, hiding around 60,000 secret transactions and picking up hundreds of millions of dollars in fees.

Now, in a full year trading update, the bank says it is on the verge of completing a deal to settle with another four US regulators for around $330 million.

The figure is considerably less than predicted in some quarters and shares in Standard Chartered rose around two per cent in London morning trading. The firm is now trading near to where it was before the Iran controversy first hit when shares plunged by 20% on fears that its US dollar clearing license could be lost.