Bank of America coughs to peddling AMD, Intel shares

THE BANK OF AMERICA has had its knuckles rapped again by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for breaching rules and benefiting from independent advice it was supposed to give.

The Dow Jones news wire said that on September the 12th, 2000 an analyst at the BOA gave Intel and AMD a downgrade which sent semi shares spiralling downwards. Between 1999 and 2001 information was shared within the bank breaching etiquette quite a bit.

Investment banking is supposed to be different from research, said the SEC and as a result of Chinese walls being breached, the BOA made $1.3 million in fees.

The SEC was tipped off anonymously and requested info from BOA about the trades but the Bank took an age to reply. The SEC fined it $10 million in 2004. And yesterday the BOA agreed to pay $26 million to the SEC to settle the case. µ

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