Bank of America Merrill Lynch Merger Agreement

With all the turmoil on Wall Street this week, Bank of America just publicly released the bank-of-america-merrill-lynch-merger-agreement within a Form 8k filing on September 18, 2008.  We’ll be adding that to the thousands of other merger agreements, and millions of agreements and contracts, at www.RealDealDocs.com.  The collection includes hundreds of other Bank of America contracts and agreements as well.

Using RealDealDocs.com, lawyers and other professionals easily search across millions of agreements, or even find specific agreement clauses and provisions, and see previews for free to find merger agreements and other types of contracts that have been drafted by top law firms.  Thousands of professionals use RealDealDocs every day to save time researching and drafting deals or to gain competitive intelligence.

Bank of America and Merrill Lynch to merge?

What a dramatic day for the Fed and the investment banking community.  Now that both Bank of America and Barclays have bowed out of the running to serve as white knight for Lehman Brothers, which is announcing plans for a Chapter 11, it appears that Bank of America, which recently swallowed Countrywide, is finalizing talks around a potential merger agreement with Merrill Lynch. 

It’s hard to believe that the credit and real estate bubble from 2002-2006 could take down this many old line Wall Street firms (thank you Mr. Greenspan, along with your Greenspan put), but it appears that it’s finally time for the chickens to come home to roost.  For decades, the Fed and the US government have subsidized the risk for countless investors and corporate managers, going back to the S&L crisis and 1987 stock market crash, all the way through the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac just last week.  As tough as it is, perhaps we can start encouraging personal and corporate fiscal responsiblity and end the cycle of passing along the costs of poor decision making to someone else, namely taxpayers who are in a position to help out by virtue of their own solvency.