The judge who will decide whether information about those Merrill Lynch bonuses should be made public has said he’ll make a decision within the week, Bloomberg reports.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating the bonus awards, which reportedly total $3-4 billion. Bank of America, which now owns Merrill Lynch, has refused to disclose to Cuomo which Merrill employees received the awards, and how much each got.
But we particularly liked this argument from B of A’s lawyer, Evan Davis, made to Judge Bernard Fried:
Americans care about their privacy. That matters to us because if we don’t try to protect it and succeed in protecting it we’ll lose them to foreign banks.
Aah yes, Bank of America: famed protector of privacy. When the subject is executive bonuses, that may be true. When its customers’ personal information, maybe not so much.