Bank of America Corporation is having limited success in its efforts to stamp out questions about its acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. On August 3 the bank agreed to pay $33 million to settle charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it misled investors about billions of dollars in bonuses promised to Merrill executives prior to the consummation of the merger. But six weeks later, Manhattan federal district court judge Jed Rakoff voided the settlement since, he wrote, “it proposes that the shareholders who were victims of the Bank’s alleged misconduct now pay the penalty for that misconduct.”
The settlement, negotiated by Lewis Liman at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, for BofA, was announced the same day that the SEC filed its complaint in federal district court in Manhattan.
