investigations
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office is gathering information in order to file fraud charges against some BoA executives over what they knew, and what they hid, when they acquired
Merrill Lynch & Co. a year ago. Earlier this week, his office
subpoenaed 5 board members to find out "what they knew regarding the mounting losses and bonus payments at Merrill before the deal closed on Jan. 1 and what role they played in deciding whether to disclose that information to shareholders," according to the Associated Press.
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rakoff rocks
Judge Jed Rakoff, our favorite crusading curmudgeon of the court, is at it again. And once again, he's turned his ire to the backroom deal that
Bank of America tried to cut with the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle a complaint about outsize bonuses paid at
Merrill Lynch before BofA took it over last year. The $33 million settlement, Rakoff wrote in his decision, "does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality."
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executive compensation
Recently, the SEC settled with
Bank of America over charges that the company mislead its investors about the $3.6 billion in bonuses paid by Merrill as the brokerage was being taken over. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, however, isn't buying it. He's refusing to approve the settlement until it can be shown that the $33 million Bank of America agreed to pay is adequate. That's nice, but he best part is that the judge is being hilariously sarcastic during the hearings.
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advertising
Slate has put together a sarcastic look at financial-type commercials through the years. We like the one with Samuel L. Jackson and the centaur.
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failure
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's report on the bonus structures of the banking industry is out and — oh my— it's damning. The AG says that 3 banks,
Goldman Sachs,
Morgan Stanley, and JP. Morgan Chase, paid out bonuses that " were substantially greater than the banks' net income."
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bank of america
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office is at it again. They've been investigating the circumstances that led to the merger of
Bank of America and
Merrill Lynch and the subsequent bonus payments to executives. In a letter to Senator
Chris Dodd (D-CT), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Cuomo quotes Bank of America CEO
Ken Lewis as saying that former Treasury Secretary
Hank Paulson threatened him with removal from his position and mass firing of the board and senior management if he didn't allow the merger to go through.
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feisty banking heiresses
Virginia Hammerness, the 75-year-old heiress to A.P. Giannini's family fortune and a significant stockholder in
Bank of America, the bank her grandfather founded in San Francisco in 1904, has harsh words for the people in charge.
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something happened
You know how
Merrill Lynch recently lost $15 billion? Remember how we're in a unbelievably huge global financial crisis that threatens to unravel the fabric of our economy?
John Thain says that's no reason not to pay billions of dollars in bonuses.
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mergers and acquisitions
It seems that Bank of America didn't really appreciate that
unexpected $15.4 billion dollar 4th quarter loss by Merrill Lynch — because its former CEO,
John Thain has been shown the door.
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merrill lynch
Merrill Lynch CEO
John Thain spent over $1.22 million to renovate his office in early 2008, just as his firm was getting ready to slash thousands of jobs, cut back on spending and dump businesses. Here's this douchebag's big-ticket tally of personal aggrandizement in the midst of financial crisis:
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money meltdown
Bank of America has announced that it will lay off 30,000-35,000 people as a result of its merger with Merrill Lynch and the economic downturn. [
MarketWatch]
(Thanks, Dariush!)