U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff refused to sign off on a consent decree between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bank of America Corp., saying that blessing the deal without a hearing would leave the public in the dark regarding a key aspect of the Wall Street bailout.
Instead, Judge Rakoff set a hearing for Monday over the charges, in which the SEC alleged that the bank misled shareholders about billions of dollars in bonuses promised to Merrill Lynch & Co. employees when the bank bought Merrill at the height of the financial crisis last year.