merrill lynch

A House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on the controversial merger between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch has been postponed “due to additional documents recently received,” the panel announced today.
The hearing, initially to be held Thursday, has not been rescheduled.

Bush administration officials have been under fire for effectively forcing a merger last December between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch without informing BoA shareholders of the financial dire straights Merrill was in at the time.
But yesterday the Obama administration was pulled more deeply into the scandal as well, after newly unveiled BoA documents suggested [...]

He was practically a fixture on Capitol Hill during the Wall Street bailout debate and subsequent oversight discussions. But Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America, is set to retire at the end of the year.
Lewis and BoA have been in hot water over their government-backed deal to acquire the failing Merrill Lynch in December. [...]

Just a few days after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before House lawmakers about his role in Bank of America’s controversial buyout of Merrill Lynch, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) announced that former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will be the next official to take the hot seat.
Bank of America purchased [...]

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is testifying this morning before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about his role in catalyzing Bank of America’s controversial December buyout of Merrill Lynch.
The saga made headlines this spring when former BoA CEO Ken Lewis told New York’s attorney general that he was reluctant to go through with [...]

On Thursday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is hosting former Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis at a hearing to explore the genesis of Bank of America’s December purchase of the flailing Merrill Lynch. In anticipation of that gathering, Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), along with Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who heads the [...]

Here’s a fun accounting term to remember: accretable yield. That’s the difference between a loan’s value on a bank’s balance sheet and the expected cash flow from the loan. Bloomberg reports:
JPMorgan Chase & Co. stands to reap a $29 billion windfall thanks to an accounting rule that lets the second-biggest U.S. bank transform bad loans [...]

Just a few weeks after Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) requested information from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner about White House plans to sidestep executive pay limits for bailed out firms (information that still hasn’t been provided), Towns is asking Geithner about his role in Bank of America’s reportedly shady acquisition of Merrill Lynch in December.
Yesterday, the [...]

When Merrill Lynch snuck in $4 billion in executive bonuses just before its sale to Bank of America, nearly everyone I spoke with said that while the move was despicable, there wasn’t anything anyone could do. Taxpayers aren’t shareholders of Merrill, and they had to just stand by and watch.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo [...]

President Obama’s scolding of the financial industry Thursday for awarding itself nearly $20 billion in bonuses during one of its worst years in decades pretty much speaks for itself. Instead of piling on here, let’s just turn instead to the late Myron Cope, the longtime voice of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the inventor of the [...]