The Securities Exchange Commission decided that Bank of America is going to have to pay $33 million for failing to alert shareholders about bonus payments made to Merrill Lynch.

The SEC filed charges against BofA this morning for misleading its’ investors about paying billions of dollars in bonuses to top executives at Merrill Lynch, the brokerage giant they just purchased.

“Regulators alleged that the Charlotte, N.C.-based lender failed to disclose plans to give out $5.8 billion in bonuses for fiscal year 2008 in its proxy statement. Instead, Bank of America told shareholders that Merrill had agreed not to pay year-end performance bonuses, according to the SEC.”

“‘Failing to disclose that a struggling company will pay out billions of dollars in performance bonuses obviously violates that duty and warrants the significant financial penalty imposed by today’s settlement,’ Robert Khuzami, Director of the SEC’s division of enforcement, said in a statement.”

BofA agreed to settle without admitting to the charges.

Check out the original article: BofA to pay $33M fine over Merrill bonuses

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Overdraft fees… We all get ‘em. In fact I got some this past weekend. Most of the time, they are never straight up either, I always have some discrepancy with the way they went through.. someone else noticed this too, and decided to do something about it.

College Student Melanie Garcia was alarmed last summer when her Miami Springs branch Wachovia charged her two overdraft fees for covering debit card transactions with insufficient funds in her account.

Garcia took a closer look and realized that something fishy was going on.

“At least four transactions were held for three days, and a check with the highest amount was processed first, depleting her account when smaller and earlier transactions could have been processed without a fee.”

Garcia ended up being charged $88 for $57.39

“Wachovia routinely enforces a policy whereby charges incurred are posted to consumers’ accounts in nonchronological order designed to maximize the number of overdraft fees,” the lawsuit claims.

Garcia maintains that Wachovia abused her contract rights and that amounts to “Bad Faith”.

Check out the original article: Wachovia, BofA, Citibank Sued Over ‘Bad-Faith’ Overdraft Fees

RealDealDocs.com is a division of Practice Technologies, Inc. the creators of SmartRules.com. SmartRules provides step by step guides to local rules and civil procedure for state courts & federal courts throughout the country.

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