Confidential Treatment of Portions of this Letter Has Been Requested by Bank of America Corporation Pursuant to 17 C.F.R. § 200.83. Brackets denote such omissions. | |
1. | We note your disclosure that you applied an incorrect adjustment in the determination of regulatory capital related to the treatment of the fair value option adjustment for structured notes assumed in the Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. acquisition in 2009, resulting in an overstatement of your historical regulatory capital ratios including in prior SEC filings and other regulatory reports. Additionally, on May 27, 2014, you filed an 8-K disclosing that a third party was engaged to perform certain procedures related to your 2014 CCAR resubmission process and controls regarding reporting and calculations of regulatory capital ratios, focusing on the periods ended September 30, 2013 and March 31, 2014, and that this review resulted in adjustments to your regulatory capital ratios for the period ended September 30, 2013. Lastly, we noted that on June 2, 2014 a spokesman for the company noted that you made an error in calculating the volume data you sent to FINRA regarding the equity volume transacted on your alternative trading system. In light of these errors noted in your SEC and other regulatory reporting, please provide us with the following additional information: |
Rule 83 confidential treatment request made by Bank of America Corporation |
• | Tell us whether the identification of the regulatory capital ratio error and subsequent adjustments are indicative of the existence of one or more material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting (ICFR), and, if so, whether any such material weaknesses also would have existed as of December 31, 2013; |
• | To the extent you identified significant deficiencies in your original assessment of ICFR as of December 31, 2013, tell us the nature of cash, including the impacted component(s) of the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) Internal Control Integrated Framework, and how you evaluated their severity individually and in the aggregate, including in aggregation with any deficiencies identified upon discovery of the above regulatory capital ratio error, if applicable; and |
• | Upon discovery of the error related to alternative trading system volume in your regulatory reporting to FINRA, tell us the extent to which there may be common root causes to the errors in your regulatory capital ratio reporting that are relevant to the evaluation of the nature and severity of any deficiencies in ICFR (especially the control environment, risk assessment, or monitoring components of COSO). |