I can barely read this through my empathetic tears:
March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. will suffer “grave and irreparable harm” if Merrill Lynch & Co. employees paid $3.6 billion in bonuses just before the firm’s acquisition by the bank are publicly identified, its lawyers said.
Bank of America today filed documents in state court in Manhattan to intervene in a case brought by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to compel former Merrill Chief Executive Officer John Thain to testify about the bonus recipients.
“Neither the individual names nor the job titles bear any reasonable or relevant relationship” to Cuomo’s investigation, the firms argued in the documents. “Nor is there a reasonable or relevant reason to disclose such information to the general public.”
The information Cuomo seeks would provide a “road map” revealing which business lines the banks believe to be most valuable and enable competitors to poach the bank’s top talent, Bank of America argued in the court filing. Disclosure of the information would also cause “internal dissension and consternation,” pose security risks for the exposed bankers and their families, and cause employees to leave, according to the filings.
God, I hate that internal dissension and consternation! And of course, unless they disclose, no one will have a clue that the guy with the Hamptons beach house, private car and driver, gold Rolex and Park Avenue penthouse works on Wall Street. Why, people might even try to steal from them the same way they stole from us!
