Banks, Bank Of America | featured news

Kenneth D. Lewis, the Bank of America chief, told a House panel that he was pressured by the government late last year to purchase Merrill Lynch.

House lawmakers on Tuesday said they have subpoenaed the Federal Reserve to hand over e-mails, notes and other documents related to its role in Bank of America Corp.'s acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co.

Lending giant says it is 'well on its way' towards meeting the nearly $34 billion in capital requirements that regulators demanded after the bank stress tests.

Citigroup Inc and Bank of America Corp shares rallied in premarket trading ahead of the release of "stress test" results that will force them and other top banks to raise tens of billions of dollars in capital.

Bank of America needs $34 billion in extra cash, a source familiar with U.S. government stress tests on leading banks told Reuters, unsettling markets and stoking talk of a possible asset sale in China.

Shareholders stripped Kenneth D. Lewis of his chairman’s title in a vote that may mark the beginning of the end of his leadership at the embattled bank.

So begins the tricky process of rolling out stress test results. The dance starts with a leak to the WSJ. Word is that the Federal Reserve has told Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC) that they'll both need to raise billions more in order to be adequately capitalized. Neither is a huge surprise.

Can Kenneth D. Lewis hold on at Bank of America? The answer to that question, much anticipated on Wall Street, is expected to arrive Wednesday, when Bank of America shareholders are to vote on whether Mr. Lewis, the bank's the embattled chairman and chief executive, will remain on the board.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Department chief Henry Paulson pressured Bank of America Corp. to not discuss its increasingly troubled plan to buy Merrill Lynch & Co. -- a deal that later triggered a government bailout of BofA -- according to testimony by Kenneth Lewis, the bank's chief executive.

Despite better-than-expected profit at Bank of America, U.S. stocks slid lower in early trading as investors worried about earnings at non-financial companies.