SEC Agrees with BofA, Bank Won't Have to Share Details on Merger Job Cuts

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Bank of America Corp. will not be required to disclose to shareholders how the elimination of 17,000 jobs as a result of a FleetBoston Financial merger will impact employees and their dislocation. A proposal submitted by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters Pension asked that BofA share specific details on the process behind job elimination and relocation decisions; the total number and type of jobs cut or relocated to foreign countries in the past five years; the impact on workers, communities, suppliers and customers; and the effect of job elimination and relocation on executive compensation. The SEC ruled in favor of BofA saying that the explanations are not needed because the job cuts relate to the bank's ordinary operations. In a statement, BofA Attorney Jacqueline Jones said getting into specifics may be over shareholders' heads. “The Proposal seeks to probe deeply into the matters of a complex nature -global work force management – upon which shareholders, as a group, are not in a position to make an informed judgment,” Jones wrote. Meanwhile, BofA said it is cooperating with authorities after a discovery that it lost tapes of personal financial information for 1.2 million accounts belonging to federal employees including U.S. senators and members of the Defense Department.