Bondholders protest Bank of America accord
7/6/2011NEW YORK — A group of bondholders plans to challenge Bank of America Corp.’s $8.5 billion settlement with holders of soured mortgage-backed securities, saying it may be unfair to other bond investors.
In court papers filed Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, 11 companies sharing the name Walnut Place said they had “serious concerns about the secret, nonadversarial, and conflicted way in which the proposed settlement was negotiated and about the fairness of the terms.”
Bank of America on June 29 announced the settlement with 22 institutional investors including BlackRock Inc., MetLife Inc., Allianz SE’s Pacific Investment Management Co., and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That accord was part of $20 billion of mortgage-related charges that the bank said it would take, hoping to resolve much of the liability from its $2.5 billion purchase in 2008 of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp.