Bofa

Bank of America Corp.'s deal to pay $33 million to settle accusations that it misled shareholders about executive bonuses hit a roadblock Monday -- U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff. The bank agreed last week to pay the money to settle a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit alleging that it led shareholders to believe that Merrill Lynch & Co. would not pay year-end bonuses. In fact, the bank had already approved $5.8 billion in bonuses at Merrill, which it was in the process of acquiring at the time.

Re: "Bank of America Will Cut 10,000 Additional Jobs" (Business, July 29): You reported that BofA's massive new layoffs will translate into a total of 35,000 job losses since the bank merged with NationsBank Corp. just two years ago. You also wrote that, of the $600 million BofA expects to "save" through this carnage, "$25 million will be spent to burnish the bank's brand image." I believe this is what might be called a self-defeating strategy. Or, in the more economical words of the analyst you interviewed: "dumbsizing."

This is a story of persistence. In the case of Miriam Ramirez, it's the story of trying to obtain a much-needed loan modification from Bank of America. In BofA's case, it's the story of giving a mortgage customer the runaround for two years . Loan modifications have been an increasingly nettlesome issue as millions of homeowners struggle to make mortgage payments during the economic slump. The Obama administration has called upon banks to be more diligent in assisting customers prior to foreclosing on properties.

Consumer advocates have long maintained that one of the more unfair practices in the business world is a provision in many service contracts preventing customers from joining class-action lawsuits and having to submit instead to binding arbitration to settle disputes. Arbitration, critics say, typically favors businesses over consumers. And it's not worth most people's time to arbitrate nickel-and-dime issues that could be more practically dealt with in court. So it was big news recently when Bank of America announced it would be the first major financial institution to no longer require that disgruntled credit card, banking and loan customers arbitrate any grievances.

NEW YORK - As Bank of America Corp. pulls itself free from a swamp of mortgage liabilities, new troubles keep threatening to suck it back under. BofA agreed to settle a big insurer's claims over faulty mortgage bonds for $1.7 billion Monday. But it found itself threatened with new legal action for failing to abide by a landmark settlement aimed at saving homeowners from foreclosure. The Charlotte, N.C., bank said it would settle a lawsuit dating from the financial crisis with mortgage insurance specialist MBIA Inc. The insurer had been pressing BofA for more than $5 billion in damages.

Bank of America Corp. scrambled to restore service late Friday to its enormous customer base - 40 million households - which spent most of the day without access to online, mobile and telephone banking services. As one prominent consultant called the outage "inexcusable," the bank declined to comment on the causes of the shutdown. A spokesman referred reporters to a bank tweet late Friday saying it was "still working on our technical issue. " It remained unclear whether the bank had fallen victim to another of the hacker attacks that have targeted electronic channels at big banks sporadically since September.

Bank of America Corp. downsized its way to a profitable second quarter, shedding high-risk loans and cutting costs in reporting earnings of $2.5 billion -- 19 cents a share, beating Wall Street expectations of 16 cents. Revenue shrank even more than analysts had expected, the giant Charlotte, N.C., bank reported Wednesday , coming in at $22 billion versus Wall Street's projection of $22.8 billion. BofA said it had paid down its long-term debt by $53 billion during the quarter, while loans on the company's books declined by 5%, compared to second-quarter increases in loan totals at megabank rivals JPMorgan Chase & Co.,Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. A year ago, BofA took a deep breath and threw $8.5 billion at the tsunami of legal claims stemming from its 2008 acquisition of Countrywide Financial Corp., the hyper-aggressive mortgage lender in Calabasas.

Bank of America Corp., which has been working to downsize its consumer operations by 30,000 employees, now is targeting highly compensated investment bankers and non-U.S. wealth managers - efforts expected to reduce the job rolls at the bank by 2,000 people. The cuts, first reported in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, also will cost some commercial bankers their jobs at BofA, the second-largest U.S. bank as measured by assets. The actions include the planned sale of a division handling wealth management in Europe, Latin America and Asia, according to a person briefed on the plans who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter and requested anonymity.

With calls mounting for a national moratorium, Bank of America Corp. said Friday that it would halt the sale of foreclosed homes indefinitely in all 50 states as the nation's largest lender widens its investigation into how it seized homes from troubled borrowers. The freeze, which takes effect Saturday, came after lawmakers, consumer groups and civil rights organizations called for a moratorium on bank seizures. State attorneys general across the country, including California, have also called on lenders to prove that they are complying with state laws as they process record numbers of repossessions.

IT'S REALLY NO WONDER that Bank of America has been quiet about its new initiative in the Los Angeles area to offer credit cards to customers without Social Security numbers or credit histories — including illegal immigrants. After all, just hours after the Wall Street Journal reported on the program, CNN anchor Lou Dobbs chastised the $74-billion banking giant for its "outrageous policy," called its spokeswoman an idiot and hinted ominously that the new credit cards would stoke terrorism, money laundering and forgery.