When former Bank of America general counsel Tim Mayopoulos learned on 9 December last year that losses at Merrill Lynch were almost twice what he was originally told, he asked to speak with the bank’s chief financial officer (CFO) about it immediately. Instead, he was told to wait until the next day.

“We never met,” Mayopoulos says, in remarks prepared for delivery to Congress today (17 November). That’s because a little before noon the next day, Mayopoulos was pulled from a legal department meeting and told that he was fired on the spot, without notice and without reason.