The Irish arm of HSBC is being sued for more than half a billion dollars arising from the massive Ponzi scheme run by jailed US fraudster Bernard Madoff.

The United States has been “asleep at the switch” and a financial regulatory upgrade is needed in the wake of Bernard Madoff’s alleged $49.4bn (€34.5bn) fraud scheme and the $692bn (€484bn) Wall Street bailout, president-elect Barack Obama said today.