Judge Rejects Settlement Over Merrill Bonuses

Source: NY Times

A Federal District judge on Monday overturned a settlement between the Bank of America and the Securities and Exchange Commission over bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch executives just before the bank took over Merrill last year.

The judge said that Bank of America “materially lied” in shareholder communications about the bonuses.

The $33 million settlement “does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality,” wrote Jed S. Rakoff, the judge assigned to the case in federal court in Lower Manhattan.

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The judge focused much of his criticism on the fact that the fine in the case would be paid by the bank’s shareholders, who were the ones that were supposed to have been injured by the lack of disclosure.

“It is quite something else for the very management that is accused of having lied to its shareholders to determine how much of those victims’ money should be used to make the case against the management go away,” the judge wrote.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/business/15bank.html?hp

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THIS is a great decision, and a complete slap in the face to the financial industry toadies at the SEC. The whole article's worth reading. The Judge excoriates the SEC.

Too bad we can't get people like Judge Rakoff running the SEC -- but then I guess the Dems would have to stop relying on the millions from the financial industry in campaign contributions.

:rofl:

"The judge focused much of his criticism on the fact that the fine in the case would be paid by the bank’s shareholders, who were the ones that were supposed to have been injured by the lack of disclosure."

Right on point, imo!

such as the SEC vs. The Reserve. (The Reserve Primary Fund was the fund that failed a year ago and started the panic in money-market funds.)

The SEC's attitude seem to be to fuss around until it can claim "no harm, no foul", and then everybody forgets anything happened.

Now when ordinary people break the law, you can still expect to go to jail. This is just for rich people, because they're so important.

value. We'll have to hope future cases get assigned to judges with similarly large balls.

This is great, as are the exposure of the Medicare fraud. Big fines.

I hope our local carpenter's union can sue them for incompetence in the Bernie Madoff manner, considering they were swindled out of their pensions.