The FBI and US Department of Justice (DOJ) are conducting a criminal probe into Bank of America Corp’s purchase of Merrill Lynch last year, the Charlotte Observer reported on Friday.
The investigation has been under way for six months, the newspaper reported on its Web site.
A spokesman for the bank declined to confirm whether the FBI or DOJ were investigating. Spokesmen for the FBI and DOJ neither confirmed nor denied that a probe was under way.
The bank is also being investigated by other authorities including the New York Attorney General’s office, which has been drafting charges against bank officials over accusations that they misled shareholders about losses and bonus payments at the investment bank.
“We have provided thousands of documents and had numerous meetings with various government agencies regarding the Merrill Lynch transaction,” Bank of America spokesman Scott Silvestri said.
“And we continue to believe that there is no basis for charges against the company or individuals on the management team,” he said.
Jennifer Canada, a spokeswoman for North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, said the state still has an ongoing investigation into Bank of American but that she wasn’t aware of any other probes. The US attorney’s office in North Carolina’s western district declined to comment.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reached a settlement of civil fraud charges against the bank last month, after accusing the bank of failing to disclose information to shareholders about bonuses paid to Merrill employees.
However, a federal judge in New York on Monday threw out that settlement, saying it was unfair to shareholders. He also faulted the SEC for not pursuing charges against bank officials and issued a scathing rebuke to the agency. The judge, US District Judge Jed Rakoff, ordered a trial to begin in the case on Feb. 1.
Bank of America agreed to buy Merrill Lynch a year ago this week, at the height of the credit crisis and just as Lehman Brothers was preparing to file for bankruptcy protection. It was later revealed that Merrill, with the knowledge of Bank of America executives, paid Merrill employees US$3.6 billion in bonuses just before the deal closed on Jan. 1, even though the bank lost US$27.6 billion that year.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts