Thaindian News

By Meena Kar
Jan 12, (THAINDIAN NEWS) The economic recession has taken a toll on all the financial institutions of the country and had crippled many of them. The federal regulatory board has implemented some strict guidelines for the banking and non-banking institutions to help them overcome the effect of the recession. A recent report indicated that Bank Of America, which has merged with Merrill-Lynch after the economic meltdown, had planned to offer a hefty bonus to Merrill-Lynch employees without taking the consent of the stakeholders. It has been reported that the federal regulators might bring additional charges against the bank for making plans to pay bonus to Merrill-Lynch staffs before shareholders accepted their collaboration.

The allegation of planning bonus secretly has been brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission and so the bank officials might experience some serious problems. In a letter to Jed Rakoff, Judge of the U.S. District Court, the officials of SEC stated, “Bank of America kept shareholders in the dark as they were called upon to vote on the proposed merger.” Judge Jed Rakoff is looking after this case and would declare his decision after verifying all the circumstances. As the charges are quite serious, it has raised the eyebrows of people and can damage the reputation of the bank.

The bank officials have rejected all the allegations of SEC and referred to them as baseless. In a statement, they have tried to express their disappointment about the incident. SEC and Bank Of America, along with Judge Jed Rakoff were supposed to discuss this issue on Monday evening. Yet, there is no report whether they have come to any definite conclusion.