Police say a 29-year-old Merrill Lynch equity trader brutally murdered two women and stashed their bodies at his expensive apartment complex in Hong Kong, where he's currently facing murder charges.
A business student who was a week away from completing a seven-week internship at Bank of America was found dead in his dorm late last week after reportedly working until 6 AM three days in a row.
If you are unfamiliar with the specifics of the Penn State scandal, you may be under the impression that the real victims are the children who were allegedly raped and otherwise abused by assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. But you couldn't be more wrong! The real victims are Penn State alumni. More specifically: Penn…
Wherever Harold Ford pays his taxes, he pays a lot of them. He makes soooooo much money! When he started in 2007 as vice chairman, Merrill Lynch "Guaranteed" Ford $2 million/year for his work getting government bailouts and stuff. [NYT]
Former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain is no friend of Ken Lewis, the outgoing chief executive of Bank of America. Thain worked with Lewis last year to engineer the merger of Merrill and BofA, but was kicked to the curb shortly after the deal was complete and almost instantly turned into the fall guy for the messy…
Ken Lewis was once a whiz banker who helped build Bank of America into a titan. Then he organized that Merrill Lynch deal, things went south and now he's resigning. But his woes continue.
So much for Bank of America's sweetheart settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. At a hearing yesterday, Judge Jed Rakoff declined to approve the deal that the bank struck with the SEC a few weeks ago, allowing it to pay a mere $33 million to settle charges that it had failed to disclose Merrill…
That sure was quick. This morning, the SEC filed suit against Bank of America, accusing it of lying to investors when it announced that newly-acquired Merrill Lynch wouldn't pay out any year-end bonuses. (In fact, Bank of America had already signed off on $5.7 billion in Merrill payouts.) Now the bank has settled the…
• Just in case you've missed the excitement on TV, Ben Bernanke appeared on Capitol Hill today to testify about Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch. Lawmakers grilled him, Bernanke played defense: quality entertainment as usual! [NYT, WSJ]
• Financier Allen Stanford appeared in court today and pleaded not…
• Employees at Goldman Sachs can expect the "biggest bonus payouts in the firm's 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year." [Guardian]
• Banks like Merrill Lynch, UBS and Citigroup are "hiking pay for their top investment bankers in an attempt to stop an exodus of talent." [FT]
• Bill Gross of Pimco…
In January of 2008 a disgruntled Merrill Lynch employee, outraged over his bonus, took a crap on the floor, stomped in it, and proceeded to track it around the office. Now it's apparently happened again.
• Bank of America chief Ken Lewis and several federal officials will be asked to testify under oath as part of an investigation into whether BofA was pressured by the government into completing its deal with Merrill Lynch. [WSJ]
• The stress test tally thus far: Of the 19 big banks under review, six don't need to…
• After a two-month wait, the nation's 19 largest banks will start to hear today how they did on those stress tests conducted by Washington regulators. [NYT]
• If the test indicates Citigroup will need more money to stay afloat, Vikram Pandit can probably kiss his job as the bank's CEO goodbye. [NYP]
• Andrew Cuomo is…
• Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis testified under oath that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson pressured him to keep quiet about BofA's plans to buy Merrill Lynch. [WSJ, CNN]
• Credit Suisse reported a profit of $1.7 billion for the first quarter. [BN]
• Executives from a bunch of…
What do you do when your career on Wall Street has come to an ignominious end and you need to keep busy lest you end up spending the rest of your days playing bridge or golf? Take a job in academia! Greg Fleming, the former president of Merrill Lynch, is now a member of the Yale Law School faculty: This semester,…
• Stocks dropped at the opening bell this morning following the Commerce Department's report that retail sales fell 1.1 percent last month. [WSJ]
• The SEC is looking into whether Bank of America broke the law by not telling shareholders about Merrill Lynch's plan to pay out billions in bonuses. [FT]
• President Obama…
• The Treasury is expected to announce in the next few days that it will be extending bailout funds to a handful of life insurance companies. [WSJ]
• Brian Moynihan, who took over Merrill Lynch after John Thain was ousted, is emerging as a potential successor to Bank of America chief Ken Lewis. [WSJ]
• Not that Lewis…
• A half-dozen bidders have emerged for AIG's asset management unit, although efforts to sell it have been "complicated," not surprisingly. [WSJ]
• Congressman Dennis Kucinich has asked the SEC to determine if Bank of America violated the law by not disclosing Merrill Lynch's bonus plan. [DB]
• GM is speeding up…
• The unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent in March, the highest since 1983, after a total of 663,000 jobs were eliminated. [NYP, BN]
• At the G-20 summit in London. world leaders agreed to pump $1 trillion into the world economy to help bail out developing countries. [NYT]
• Bank of America chief Ken Lewis says it…
• President Obama will meet with 15 big banking CEOs in Washington today, including Vikram Pandit of Citigroup, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs. Obama plans to "quiz" them "about developments in the economy and their businesses." Sounds like fun. [CNN]
• Hedge fund managers can…
