Bank of America Corp. was already in hot water last week with a federal judge and the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly failing to disclose big bonuses that Merrill Lynch paid on December 31, one day before the two firms merged. Now some members of Congress are demanding to know why Bank of America didn’t disclose the magnitude of Merrill’s fourth quarter losses to shareholders before they voted to approve the merger.
E-mails and other documents obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform suggest that Bank of America executives knew, perhaps as early as mid-November, that Merrill’s losses would be much larger than anticipated. Now the committee wants to dig deeper.
