Bank of America trades hid billions in debt: WSJ
In letter to regulators, bank says 6 trades led to 'unintentional' accounting....
July 10, 2010, 12:17 p.m. EDT
By Sam Mamudi, MarketWatch
marketwatch.com
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Bank of America Corp. has told federal regulators that it made six trades from 2007 to early 2009 that led to it hiding billions of dollars of debt, according to a media report Saturday.
Bank of America /quotes/comstock/13*!bac/quotes/nls/bac (BAC 15.36, +0.15, +0.99%) made the admission in an April letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, The Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition.
The bank had acknowledged in its last quarterly report that its accounting for the deals, at quarter-ends from 2007 to 2009, was incorrect, added the Journal. The letter has been posted as a regulatory filing.
The trades might be examples, suggested the Journal, of Wall Street's practice of end-of-quarter window dressing, in which banks temporarily shed debt before reporting their finances.
The practice of window dressing suggests that banks are usually carrying more debt than is commonly realized..... |
