Bank of America, a multinational banking and financial services conglomerate and the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets, have agreed to pay over $7 million SEC settlement charges associated to a billion-dollar miscalculation blunder the company made five years ago.
As per the New York Times report, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said that Bank of America had been miscalculating its regulatory capital that led to a $4 billion overstatement it made over an acquisition of a 2009 portfolio from Merrill Lynch.
The capital miscalculation inaccuracies carried over each year and the Bank of America only conveyed the problems in April 2014, after which it fully worked together with investigators. And US regulators said that the bank had agreed to pay on Monday to settle the civil charges demanded by the SEC.
As stated by SEC Director of Enforcement Andrew Ceresney in a statement, he said that the magnitude of the fine mirrored the circumstance that Bank of America brought the matter to regulators' attention and took steps to correct the issue. He publicly stated, "Bank of America self-reported its regulatory capital overstatements, remediated the issues quickly and cooperated in our investigation. This penalty reflects credit for that cooperation, which allowed us to conduct our investigation efficiently and effectively."
On the other hand, a bank spokesperson had declined to comment on the settlement.
Bank of America appointed an intermediary to reassess its capital-planning courses before it resubmitted an entreaty to regulators in May to disburse more dividends to shareholders.
Consistent with the report from Reuters, Bank of America's settlement on Monday was the second case the SEC has gotten against a financial firm in recent months regarding glitches associated to acquisitions in the course of the fiscal crisis. Barclays, a renowned British Bank was struck with a $15 million penalty on September 23 for insufficient internal acquiescence systems following its takeover of the US operations of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.
This had not been the first SEC penal settlement that the Bank of America had braved this year. The bank had been the subject of several litigations and investigation regarding both mortgages and financial disclosures which included a record settlement of $16.65 billion on August 21, 2014.
© 2017 Jobs & Hire All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
