Bank Of America (BAC) And Merrill: How Many Prosecutions?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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The Bank of America (BAC) deal with the SEC to settle charges that it mislead investors about Merrill Lynch bonus payments in it proxy to approve the Merrill buyout is already being challenged in federal court. Now it appears that Andrew Cuomo, NY State Attorney General and Governor-in-waiting, may prosecute B of A.

Cuomo believes that lawyers for the bank have used attorney-client privilege to conceal some of the details of how the Merrill compensation was approved and by whom.

Cuomo is known for his aggressive prosecution of Wall St. much as his predecessor Eliot Spitzer. Cuomo’s move on B of A raises the issue of how many other state attorneys general will pile onto the Bank of America issue and whether the Justice Department may take a role as well.

There is no traffic control system for prosecution of large national banks. The number of suits filed against B of A by government attorneys and private shareholder interests could go into the dozens.That may not be an efficient way to handle what may be a scandal and the damages that could arise from it, but that is the American way nonetheless.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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