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WASHINGTON — Bank of America Corp. will hand over more documents to a congressional committee probing its hastily arranged acquisition of troubled brokerage house Merrill Lynch.
The bank will provide the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform all the documents it has requested, except for those protected by attorney-client privilege, committee chairman Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., said in a statement Tuesday evening.
Towns told the bank in a letter Friday that it was hiding behind attorney-client privilege, which Congress can refuse to recognize during its investigations. The bank missed a noon deadline Monday to provide additional information about the Merrill Lynch deal to the committee. Bank of America spokesman Scott Silvestri said Monday that Towns would meet with Anne Finucane, a member of the bank's executive management team.
On Tuesday, Towns said the meeting was "constructive."
The news comes as Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America gears up for a trial with the Securities and Exchange Commission over billions in bonuses paid at Merrill Lynch. A judge last week threw out a proposed $33 million settlement and rebuked the agency for not pursuing charges against executives.
The SEC had accused BofA of failing to disclose to shareholders that it had authorized Merrill to pay up to $5.8 billion in bonuses to its employees in 2008 even though the investment bank lost $27.6 billion that year. BofA had agreed to pay $33 million to settle the charges without admitting or denying wrongdoing, saying it didn't violate disclosure rules but wanted to avoid litigation with the SEC at a time of market uncertainty.
