The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday asked for a jury trial related to its lawsuit against Bank of America Corp. (BAC) for misleading shareholders about bonuses to Merrill Lynch employees before the companies merged in January.   U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff last month rejected a $33 million settlement between the SEC and Bank of America over the $3.6 billion in bonuses. The District Court Judge said that SEC's accusations of inadequate disclosure by the bank over bonuses paid at Merrill Lynch must go to trial. The date of trial is set for March 1, 2010.   Though BofA overpaid for Merrill Lynch, the deal makes strategic sense now. With the acquisition of Merrill Lynch, BofA gained a global investment-banking platform, profitable retail brokerage addition and significant equity-underwriting capacity, all of which it lacked earlier. For the first half of 2009, Merrill contributed $1.84 billion....

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will aggressively pursue a trial against Bank of America Corp. (BAC) for allegedly misleading investors during the acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co. late last year. The SEC accused BofA of failing to disclose to shareholders that it had authorized Merrill to pay up to $5.8 billion in bonuses to employees in 2008 even after it lost $27.6 billion that year.

Last month, the SEC and BofA had reached a settlement on the charges that required the bank to pay a $33 million fine. But US District Judge Jed Rakoff condemned the deal, saying the corporate fine would further unfairly penalize the shareholders instead of the people actually guilty of misleading investors.

Both the SEC and BofA have defended the earlier settlement proposal as appropriate. But after Rakoff's ruling, the SEC weighed its options - to go to trial, drop the

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