Thursday, March 15, 2007

Bank Of America Settles Stock Manipulation Case

Bank of America Pays Settlement in Improper Trading Case
By BLOOMBERG NEWS, Mar 15

Bank of America has agreed to pay $26 million to settle charges that its securities unit published fraudulent research reports on companies and failed to prevent leaks of reports that were used for improper trading, federal regulators said yesterday. The settlement ends a six-year investigation into the company’s misuse of its own analysts’ research.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said that sales and trading employees learned about reports before they were published, and in at least two instances the bank traded in advance of their release. The settlement stems from an industrywide inquiry into potential conflicts of interest between analysts and bankers. Bank of America was a holdout in 2003, when Citigroup and nine other Wall Street investment banks agreed to pay fines totaling $1.4 billion to settle the investigation....read more: here