NEW YORK — New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo laid out further details Wednesday about $3.6 billion in bonuses Merrill Lynch executives received, calling the investment bank’s executives irresponsible.
Cuomo detailed the size and scope of the bonuses in a letter sent to U.S. House Financial Services chairman Barney Frank.
“In a surprising fit of corporate irresponsibility, it appears that, instead of disclosing their bonus plans in a transparent way as requested by my office, Merrill Lynch secretly moved up the planned date to allocate bonuses and then richly rewarded their failed executives,” Cuomo stated.
In the letter, Cuomo said he requested information on Merrill’s expected bonuses as early as Oct. 29 but never received any details about the size of the bonus pool and criteria Merrill planned to use to make the payments.
The Merrill bonuses were paid in late December, just days before Bank of America completed its purchase of Merrill. The payments also came as Merrill was on the brink of reporting a more than $15 billion fourth-quarter loss.
Cuomo said in the letter that BofA was apparently complicit in the move to award bonuses before Merrill’s fourth-quarter loss was announced.
Both Merrill and BofA could face charges of securities fraud in New York as the attorney general’s office investigation unfolds, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
