Shareholders of Bank of America filed a securities class action against the bank yesterday alleging that it failed to disclose about $15.3 billion in losses sustained by Merrill Lynch & Co. before the shareholder vote on its acquisition. Bloomberg reports that the Dec. 5 vote on whether to buy the bank “was based on an Oct. 31 proxy statement that hadn’t been revised to account for the investment firm’s poor performance in the fourth quarter of 2008.”
The lawsuit, filed in the SDNY, alleges that “despite his knowledge of Merrill Lynch’s staggering losses,” Bank of America Chairman Kenneth Lewis didn’t relay that information to the bank’s investors and allowed the deal to close.
