At the end of 2011, Barclays' net assets stood at US$2.42 trillion, making the bank the seventh largest bank in the world. While this may seem like a great achievement, its stock price has been quite volatile over the past few years. Because of this apparent contradiction between a company that appears very successful and whose stock is performing poorly, many people wonder why Barclay's stock is falling to such an obvious point. As is the case with many stock write-down cases, the answer is complex. One reason for this latest decline is that the New York Attorney General filed a lawsuit against Barclays. This lawsuit claims that Barclays engaged in fraudulent practices, including falsifying key documents and misrepresenting the benefits the company offered its major institutional clients. The lawsuit was the result of scrutiny of the company's use of a type of trading called "dark pool." This is when clients privately trade large quantities of shares, with prices and costs that are not transparent. Barclays has attempted to avoid bad repercussions resulting from these allegations by conducting its own internal investigation into the practice and hopefully making it more open to the public.