Merrill secretly moved up bonus payments: Cuomo

[Joanne98]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Merrill Lynch secretly accelerated bonus payments last year and gave at least $1 million to each of nearly 700 employees, even as the brokerage was amassing billions of dollars of losses, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said in a letter to U.S. Rep. Barney Frank.

Merrill executives have drawn fire because they paid 2008 performance bonuses in December, earlier than usual and despite the fact that Merrill would by January 16 reveal $15.3 billion of fourth-quarter losses.

Those losses, the timing of the bonuses and the uproar over $1.2 million spent on decorating the office of Merrill CEO John Thain led to the ouster of Thain by Bank of America, which acquired Merrill last month.

Cuomo, who began questioning bonus plans in October after nine banks received $125 billion of U.S. Treasury capital injections, said in the letter that Merrill "secretly and prematurely" paid $3.6 billion of bonuses in December so that taxpayers would foot the bill.

"It appears that instead of disclosing their bonus plans in a transparent way as requested by my office, Merrill Lynch secretly moved up the planned date to allocate bonuses and then richly rewarded their failed executives," Cuomo wrote.

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE51A40120090211

[DS1]

1. seven hundred employees "deserved" one million?

What kind of f*cking company is this?

[LiberalFighter]

2. Those bonuses need to be returned.

And in addition, the names and amounts for each person receiving bonuses should be published on the internet.