HUBRIS

Cuomo Sues Bank of America Execs

NY A.G. announces lawsuit as bank settles with SEC.

Bank of America has settled a regulatory complaint with the SEC, but New York's attorney general is still accusing the bank, its former chief executive, and its chief financial officer of securities fraud. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo had been in settlement talks with the bank since November, but the talks apparently fell through. Cuomo is claiming in a lawsuit that the bank executives—Kenneth Lewis, the chief executive, and Joe Price, the chief financial officer—misled its shareholders and the government about its merger with Merrill Lynch. “Throughout this episode, the conduct of Bank of America, through its top management, was motivated by self-interest, greed, hubris, and a palpable sense that the normal rules of fair play did not apply to them,” Cuomo said Thursday. “Bank of America’s management thought of itself as too big to play by the rules and, just as disturbingly, too big to tell the truth.”