Merrill Lynch trader hides $120 million loss while executives collect $3.6 billion.
New York, NY (JusticeNewsFlash.com)–As reported by the New York Times, Bank of America, who acquired failing Merrill Lynch in December 2008, has stumbled upon serious financial and securities irregularities in Merrill Lynch trader’s accounts. Bank of America, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, is now investigating Merrill Lynch accounts and how hundreds of millions of dollars was lost on risky currency markets and tricky credit derivatives.
Financial industry experts and securities fraud lawyers are wondering how all of this red ink didn’t appear until after Merrill Lynch executives were paid $3.6 billion in bonuses and Merrill was rescued by Bank of America. One of the biggest pieces of the red ink maze to surface regards Alexis Stenfors, a Merrill currency trader in London, who is being investigated by British regulators. Stenfors allegedly gambled a $120 million loss in currency markets which went undetected while at the same time in the last months of 2008 Merrill hemorrhaged more than $13.8 billion. Bank of America was forced to ask the U.S. taxpayers for a second, multibillion dollar rescue check when the shareholders and bank executives learned of the massive losses after the merger of the two companies had been approved.
John A. Thain, the former Merrill Lynch executive who was forced to leave Bank of America when bank executives and the American public learned Thain had spent $1.2 million of the faltering Wall Street company’s money renovating his own New York office during a recession. The massive self importance expenditures, by Thain including a $35,000 commode, which is the politically correct term for a non-functional crapper, has left U.S. taxpayers in shock and awe.
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