JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay $350 million (€283 million) to Enron to settle claims that it helped executives at the energy group commit the accounting fraud that led to its bankruptcy in 2001.

Toronto-Dominion Bank also settled the same action and in addition increased its litigation reserves by $300 million to cover the separate class-action lawsuit that is being pursued by Enron investors.

Two weeks ago, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce agreed to pay $2.4 billion to settle the class-action suit and the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs said that they were going to insist that any bank that settled thereafter would pay more.

Toronto-Dominion is paying $70 million to settle its portion of the litigation, taking to $735 million the cash Enron has so far recovered for creditors. Enron has also eliminated $3 billion of counter-claims through settlements with five of the 10 banks it is suing. John Ray, Enron's chairman, said the agreements announced yesterday were "great results for creditors" and should speed the settlement with other banks.

"There should be a lot of pressure on the remaining banks to come to the table and settle."

The other banks concerned are Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch.

Like JPMorgan, Citigroup is accused of helping Enron use off-balance-sheet vehicles to inflate its figures. But the details of the cases differ and it is unclear whether a settlement with Citigroup would be higher or lower that the figure at JPMorgan.

JPMorgan said its settlement would be covered by reserves. Its shares were down 0.26 per cent at $34.56 in New York.