Bank of America, led by Ken Lewis, has been lobbying against the Employee Free Choice Act -- even while receiving taxpayer bailout money. Bank of America doesn't want "increased spending power of lower income consumers." Nice.
Meanwhile, Bank of America wasn't tending to its own core business -- and may not have actually following the law. The SEC is looking at the bank (and this is the new Obama SEC, not the old Bush SEC). From Reuters (which got the story from the Financial Times):
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is reviewing if Bank of America Corp violated federal securities law by failing to disclose to shareholders Merrill Lynch's plan to pay $3.62 billion in bonuses before they voted for the merger of the banks, the Financial Times said.Ken Lewis probably thinks taxpayers will cover paying the bank's legal fees and any penalties, too.
Mary Schapiro, chairman of the SEC, wrote in a letter to a Democratic congressman that the regulator was "carefully reviewing the Bank of America disclosure" and had not yet expressed a view on whether the bonus plan should have been revealed, the paper said.
Last week, Congressman Dennis Kucinich said in a letter to the SEC that there were "significant questions" surrounding Bank of America's failure to disclose bonus details before shareholders voted on the bank's acquisition of Merrill.
