8/4/09 am BofA Hits By $33 Mil Fine by SEC

Post #36 The following is brought to you by Intellivest Securities Research, Inc. The following is not intended as advertising by a broker-dealer and is not a research report.

A read of Tuesday's 8/4/09 print editions of: Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, Financial Times, USA Today, and Atl Journal Const yielded the following stories about Dow Jones 30 component companies:

The current divisor for the Dow found at today's page C4 of The Wall St. Jrnl is .132319125 unchanged.

Today's big story is the lead article above the fold on WSJ pA1 "BofA Hit by Fine Over Merrill Bank Pays SEC $33 Million in Bonus Dispute; Sallie Krawcheck Hired in Shake-up," also Fin Times p1, NYT pB1 & pB7 (re: hiring Sallie Krawcheck), USA Today p1B and AJC pA8 that says the fine settles a civil lawsuit alleging that BAC BofA misled shreholders about billions of dollars in bonuses promised to Merrill Lynch employees when it bought Merrill at the height of the financial crisist last year. CEO Kenneth D. Lewis is fighting to hold onto his job until his planned retirement in 2 years, launched on Monday a five way competition to succeed him with a management shake up that included hiring former Citigroup CFO Sallie Krawcheck. BAC, the largest US bank in assets and 17th ranked among the Dow Jones Industrial Average 30 components with approximately $90 billion in float, neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing in settling the lawsuit.

WSJ pC1 "Treasury To Borrow Less Than expected" says the Treasury said it will borrow less in 3Q because banks repaid $70 billion of gov. aid under the Troubled Asset Relief Program including JPM JPMorgan.

Inv. Bus Daily has a story about Goldman Sachs at pA5 "Banking Giant Stands Tall Amid Wreckage of Financial Industry" mentions Bear Stearns forced merger with JPM and BAC's acquisition of Merrill Lynch.

WSJ pC10 "Heard on the Street" says PFE CEO Jeff Kindler dismissed the possibility of a megamerger for years but switched his tone only weeks before news of PFE's acquisition of Wyeth deal broke.

WSJ pB3 "Head of Merck Vaccine Unit Retires Early as Deal Looms" says a top MRK exec, Margaret McClynn, once viewed as a candidate to become ceo of MRK retired, signaling a management shake up shead of MRK's planned purchase of Schering-Plough.

WSJ pB3 in a small item about Avastin approved by FDA for use in kidney cancer said that its producer, Roche, competes with PFE Pfizer in drugs for kidney cancer. Similar story at Inv Bus. Daily pA2

USA Today p1B and AJC pA8 report that MRK Mercks settled for $80 million another lawsuit over its withdrawn painkiller Vioxx. There are about 190 other lawsuits.

WSJ pB1 in a story about Google's CEO Eric Schmidt resigning from Apple's board says on Friday the FCC sent letters to Apple, Google and T AT&T, Applie's iPhone partner in the US, seeking more information on a recent rejection by Apple of Google Internet telephony software of the iPhone. Similar story at Inv Bus Dly pA4.

WSJ pB7 in a story about Marathon Oil's profit dropping says XOM Exxon Mobil also recently posted poor results.

Inv Bus Daily pA2 "StatCounter: Bing takes share" says MSFT's new Bing search engine had 9.41% of US Web search market in July up from 8.23% in June and also says MSFT published a case study online telling software developers how to convert iPhone applications to MSFT's Windows Mobile platform.

Inv Bus Dly pA4 "Low Cost Netbooks May Fit The Budget For College Students" says netbook makers include HPQ Hewlett Packard.