Word: billion
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...reputation will likely fare little better. Concern for Britain's national security pushed the British government in 2006 to order a halt to a separate SFO probe into allegations that BAE paid bribes to secure business with Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s. The inquiry into the $69 billion "Al-Yamamah" arms deals, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted, risked the withdrawal of Saudi cooperation on intelligence matters. BAE always denied any wrongdoing, but in a 2008 report on its business ethics commissioned by the company in the midst of the affair, BAE bosses "acknowledged that the company...
Lewis had long coveted the retail brokerage business. Merrill Lynch, with its legions of investment salespeople, was to be Lewis' crowning acquisition. It ended up being his undoing. In the quickly hatched deal, Lewis paid $19 billion for Merrill, which most people agreed was nearly bankrupt. In the fourth quarter alone, Merrill Lynch lost more than $15 billion...
When McColl retired in 2001, Lewis took over. But rather than retrenching as most people expected, Lewis proved he liked the art of the deal as much as McColl. In 2003, Bank of America bought Boston-based bank Fleet for $47 billion. Two years later he spent $35 billion to buy credit card giant MBNA. And as the credit crisis began to unfold, Lewis picked up Countrywide, which at its height was the nation's largest independent mortgage lender, for just over $4 billion...
...problems at Merrill Lynch have turned out to be much bigger than Lewis originally thought. And at times, the Merrill-related losses have raised anxiety about the health of the entire bank. In January the Treasury Department announced it was injecting an additional $20 billion into Bank of America. In all, the government has spent $45 billion trying to stabilize the finances of the bank...
...vote to approve the Merrill deal, Bank of America executives told shareholders that no bonuses would be paid to Merrill executives prior to the acquisition. In fact, Bank of America had agreed more than a month earlier to approve the payment of more than $5 billion in year-end bonuses to Merrill employees. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...