Spurred by probe, BofA to buy back securities

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Bank of America Corp. will buy back $4.5 billion of auction-rate securities to settle a nationwide probe led by Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin into its sales and marketing of the failed debt, Bloomberg News reported last week.
Bank of America, one of the largest underwriters of the securities, will offer to redeem the securities from its customers between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, it said in a statement last week. The Charlotte-based bank said it expects to record a pretax charge of about $275 million in connection with the buy-backs.
“It was important to get this done,’’ Galvin, Massachusetts’ top securities regulator, said in an interview. Galvin led a 12-state probe into Bank of America that began after the auction-rate market collapsed in February.
Bank of America said in its statement that it continues to cooperate with New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and the Securities and Exchange Commission in their separate investigations of the bank and its role in what once was a $330 billion auction-rate market. Alex Detrick, a spokesman for Cuomo, declined to comment. &#8226