Free Republic

A House oversight panel is examining the $45 billion federal bailout of Bank of America Corp. and its shotgun acquisition of Merrill Lynch&Co. last year at the height of the financial crisis. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been investigating the government's role in pushing the hastily arranged takeover of Merrill Lynch, the tumultuous events surrounding the deal and the payment of billions of dollars in bonuses to Merrill employees. The panel has previously asked Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, the second-largest U.S. bank, to hand over related documents. The committee is scheduled to hold a hearing at...

Government regulators threatened to remove top Bank of America executives in December if they didn't acquire Merrill Lynch, but also agreed to provide taxpayer funds to compensate for Merrill's poor performance, according to company records obtained by The Washington Times. The documents -- e-mails between bank executives and their outside lawyers as well as board-meeting talking points prepared for then-Chief Executive Ken Lewis -- indicate that former Treasury Secretary Henry Mr. Paulson Jr. and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S. Bernanke promised to give the bank taxpayer bailout funds to compensate them for Merrill's poor performance. Summaries written by the...

Dispute of Paulson, Bernanke testimony Court documents show that federal regulators were told about billions of dollars in bonuses awarded to Merrill Lynch executives during the company's takeover by Bank of America - contradicting statements to Congress by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), in a brief filed in ongoing litigation with Bank of America Corp., said the bank informed the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve of the Merrill Lynch bonuses as early as Dec. 17 - weeks before the government approved a $20 billion bailout...

n prepared remarks for a Congressional hearing obtained today by ABC News, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson admits telling Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis that the Federal Reserve could remove the bank's board members if they backed out of their proposed merger with Merrill Lynch last December. In prepared remarks for a Congressional hearing obtained Wednesday by ABC News, former Treasury... (AP Graphics) On Thursday morning, Paulson will defend his actions before the House Oversight Committee in the last of three hearings that the panel has conducted on the controversial merger. When Bank of America considered scuttling the merger...

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke engaged in a "cover-up" to disguise his actions in strong-arming the merger of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch last fall, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) charged in a statement released moments ago. Quick catchup: Bank of America chief executive Ken Lewis has twice testified under oath that Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson threatened to remove him (Lewis) and the B of A board if he didn't go through with a proposed merger with troubled brokerage Merrill Lynch. Lewis said that he considered trying to back out of the deal as he saw Merrill's losses...

NEW YORK -- Bank of America Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis told the New York attorney general he believed former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke wanted him to keep quiet about the worsening terms of the bank's acquisition of Merrill Lynch, according to testimony reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Four of the top executives at Merrill Lynch pocketed $121 million in bonuses just before taxpayers helped finance a takeover of the failing firm, the Daily News has learned. The flush foursome each pocketed payments ranging from $18 million to $39 million, investigators from the state attorney general's office found. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for the past month has been examining the highly suspicious timing of the last-minute Merrill handouts. In all, Merrill doled out $3.6 billion in bonuses just days before Bank of America finalized its deal to buy the collapsing firm - with the help of $45 billion...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Merrill Lynch quietly paid out at least one million dollars bonus each to about 700 top executive even when the investment house was bleeding with losses last year, a probe has revealed. They were part of 3.6 billion dollars in the firm's bonus payments in December before the announcement of its fourth quarterly losses and takeover by Bank of America, the investigation by the New York state Attorney General's office showed. "696 individuals received bonuses of one million dollars or more," New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said of the Merrill scandal in a letter to a...

Bank of America Corp. said Wednesday it is selling some of its corporate aircraft as the bank looks to scale back costs. The move comes as many financial firms are giving up private jet travel as scrutiny mounts over lavish spending after the companies received billions of dollars in rescue funds. Since October, Charlotte-based Bank of America has received $45 billion in government assistance, including a $20 billion injection last month to help with its troubled Merrill Lynch & Co. acquisition. "As part of an ongoing cost reduction effort we have been scaling back on our use of corporate aircraft...

Bank of America Corp.’s board expressed support for Chairman and Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis following its meeting Wednesday. “The board today during the regular meeting expressed support for Ken Lewis and the management team, noting their expertise in managing through challenging environments and in assimilating mergers,” lead director Temple Sloan Jr. said in a statement issued through a bank spokesman.

BY DAN FITZPATRICK and JOANN S. LUBLIN Bank of America Corp.'s handling of its acquisition of troubled Merrill Lynch & Co. has put Chairman and Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis on the hot seat with irate shareholders. Among those disappointed in the steep decline in the bank's stock are two veterans who helped Mr. Lewis rise to the top. Hugh McColl Jr., Bank of America's buccaneering former chairman and chief executive, who picked Mr. Lewis as his successor, and James Hance, the bank's former chief financial officer, privately have expressed disappointment in the types of risks taken by Bank of America...

Prepare to bury the fatally wounded big banks By Frank Partnoy Published: January 18 2009 19:04 | Last updated: January 18 2009 19:04 Friday’s bad news from Citigroup and Bank of America confirmed what many experts have long suspected: the subprime losses of 2007 were a bullet that fatally wounded the banks. Many lost so much money on toxic subprime mortgage-related derivatives that they have been essentially insolvent for more than a year. It has taken so long for these banks to fall only because of government support and some investors’ bottomless capacity for denial. Consider Friday’s eye-popping figures. Bank...

BY DAN FITZPATRICK Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis on Friday rejected the suggestion that he and his team did not conduct enough due diligence before agreeing to buy securities firm Merrill Lynch & Co., saying forecasts did not suggest Merrill's assets would drop so suddenly in value. "We did not expect the significant deterioration in mid to late December that we saw," he said on a conference call with analysts. The fourth-quarter decline at Merrill led to an agreement announced Friday giving Bank of America $20 billion in additional U.S. aid and a government guarantee to backstop...

BY ERIC DASH, LOUISE STORY, AND ANDREW ROSS SORKIN Kenneth Lewis gambled on bold acquisitions to build Bank of America into the nation's largest bank. But the need for fresh government support to grapple with the newly revealed losses at Merrill Lynch, the brokerage firm he snapped up in a rapid-fire arrangement at the height of the financial crisis in September, raises questions about whether the bank has gone a deal too far. Two weeks after closing its purchase of Merrill Lynch at the urging of U.S. regulators, the government cemented a deal at midnight Thursday to supply Bank of...

JUST MAYBE. Maybe this "draft Sununu for Republican National Chairman" thing isn't a waste of time. It's not something we'd expect Sen. John Sununu to want to get into. Sure, he lost his reelection bid, but he's young, he has a growing family and, politically speaking, he still has a bright future and, with his independent streak, he isn't someone we'd think would want to become the face of the establishment Republican Party, not to mention take part in the very inside baseball game of running for the post. But, surprisingly, Sununu didn't close the door to it yesterday. Sununu...

Merrill Lynch, the investment bank that sold itself to Bank of America last month, reported a third-quarter loss on Thursday of $5.1 billion, or $5.56 a share. It is the fifth quarterly loss for the troubled company, known for its “thundering herd” of financial advisers. Last year in the third quarter, as the credit markets were beginning to tighten, Merrill reported a loss of $2.4 billion and was one of the first banks to write-down some mortgage assets. Since then, Merrill has reported a loss for every quarter and has taken more than $45 billion in write-downs.[Snip] Mr. Thain has...

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The ruptured U.S. financial system was facing an unprecedented shakeup on Sunday that could lead to the failure of Lehman Brothers, the takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co Inc and big asset sales by big insurer American International Group. The developments may indicate Wall Street and Washington are accepting that massive triage is necessary in the face of the 13-month old credit crisis and destructive U.S. housing bust. "The U.S. financial system is finding the tectonic plates underneath its foundation are shifting like they have never shifted before," said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Equity...

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Corp (NYSE:GM - News) will need to raise as much as $15 billion in cash to shore up liquidity and bankruptcy is "not impossible" if the U.S. auto market continues to slump, Merrill Lynch said. Other analysts have suggested GM, whose shares fell to a new 54-year low on Wednesday, needs to raise funds to ride out the downturn in the U.S. auto market through 2009. But Merrill's estimate of GM's financing needs is the highest yet. It also carried the most stark warning of the bankruptcy risk for the largest U.S. automaker. GM declined...

Massachusetts state authorities on Friday charged Merrill Lynch and Co., Inc. with fraud and misrepresentation related to about $14 million worth of subprime securities it sold to the city of Springfield. The complaint also charges Merrill agents Carl Kipper and Manuel Choy. "This complaint is focused on Merrill Lynch's (MER)sale, through agents Kipper and Choy, of certain esoteric financial instruments known as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) to the City of Springfield Massachusetts, which were unsuitable for the city and which, within months after the sale, became illiquid and lost almost all of their market value," the state said in its...

Merrill Lynch & Co., in a bid to slash its exposure to risky mortgage-backed securities, has engaged in deals with hedge funds that may have been designed to delay the day of reckoning on losses, people close to the situation said. The transactions are among the issues likely to be examined by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC is looking into how the Wall Street firm has been valuing, or "marking," its mortgage securities and how it has disclosed its positions to investors, a person familiar with the probe said. Regulators are scrutinizing whether Merrill knew its mortgage-related problem...

Philip Merrill, the prominent publisher and former diplomat whose body was found floating in the Chesapeake Bay on Monday, suffered from a heart condition and apparently took his own life, his family said last night. Merrill, 72, was found with a shotgun wound to the head and a small anchor tied around one or both ankles, according to a source familiar with the investigation. ~~~~snip~~~~ In 1996, former CIA director William E. Colby died from drowning and exposure after falling from a canoe off Charles County. ~~~~snip~~~~~ In 1978, another former high-level CIA employee, John A. Paisley, disappeared while sailing...

Rescuers using small boats, a helicopter and a C-130 aircraft searched a portion of the Chesapeake Bay today for missing diplomat and publisher Philip Merrill, whose sailboat was found adrift last night, Coast Guard authorities said. Officials from the Maryland Natural Resources Police and the Coast Guard began searching overnight the area between the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and the point where his boat was found, which is roughly 20 miles south of Annapolis. The search area is roughly 25 miles by 8 miles, said Coast Guard Lt. Commander Adam Mach. Rescuers using small boats, a helicopter and a C-130 aircraft...

AP) A Democratic state legislator announced Tuesday she has quit the party, leaving the Maine House evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Rep. Barbara Merrill's defection will give the two major parties 73 seats each when the 2006 session opens on Wednesday. Merrill becomes one of four unenrolled or independent members. One Green Party member also serves in the 151-seat chamber. The Democrats have held a majority in the Maine House for three decades, except for a brief period in 1996 when the Republicans gained the edge. The Democrats maintain control of the state Senate, with 19 of the 35...

General Merrill A. "Tony" McPeak "served for over 35 years in the US Air Force, culminating in four years as Chief of Staff from 1990 through 1994. He retired with the rank of 4-Star General. General McPeak has served as President of McPeak & Associates, an aerospace consulting company, since his retirement from active service. He is President and COO of Kitcomm Communications, Ltd, and Chairman of the Board of ECC, Intl., a publicly traded defense contractor. General McPeak also serves on the Boards of Directors of Tektronix, Inc., Trans World Airlines, Inc., and Centerspan Communications, Inc." "McPeak was a...