Dallas, Texas 08/30/2013 (Financialstrend) – In 2005 an attorney, representative of some black advisers had filed a class action lawsuit against the Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC)’s Merrill Lynch unit. He has recently told a finance website that the Bank of America has now agreed to settle the discrimination lawsuit.
As a part of this settlement almost 12000 class representatives may receive a segment of $160M from the bank. The proposed settlement will be reviewed by a judge starting from September.
A bank representative confirmed that the decision was in place and that Bank of America Corp was totally dedicated to improving the count of chances for the African- American economic advisers.
The suit was filed by George McReynolds alleging the Merrill Lynch for discriminations in account distribution and business opportunities to the black. Reynolds is still in the employ of Merrill Lynch. The suit was filed on behalf of 700 black brokers working for the Merrill Lynch.
Wednesday trading
The stock of Bank of America rose by 0.07% in the Wednesday’s trading session. The prices of the bank’s shares opened at $14.07 which went about touching an intraday high of $14.25 and closed at$14.12. More than 96.47million shares were traded on Wednesday.
Bank Of America’s huge legal bills
The Bank of America Corporation, the sixth biggest U.S bank led by JP Morgan has piled up $ 103 billion in legal costs since the financial crises. This figure exceeds all the dividends payments to shareholders in the past 5 years.
This amount has been spent on payments to lawyers and litigation as well as for settling claims of shoddy mortgages and foreclosures in accordance with data compiled by Bloomberg.
It is very interesting to learn that the sum which is equivalent to spending $51 million a day is more than enough to nullify the Bank’s earnings for the year 2012.
