Desde hace algunos meses los medios de comunicación norteamericanos venían prestando atención al debate planteado ante un Juez federal de Nueva York en relación con el pago de una importante suma en concepto de retribución variable a los ejecutivos de Merrill Lynch, en el marco de su adquisición por Bank of America. El olfato informativo se vio ratificado por el contenido de la resolución del Juez Jed Rakoff, notificada el pasado día 14 de septiembre y de la que se hicieron eco los principales medios. Trataré de reconstruir los hechos a partir de las informaciones publicadas el pasado 15 de septiembre por el DealBook de The New York Times y por el Law Blog de The Wall Street Journal, en los que además se podía leer en su integridad la decisión judicial.
El proceso enfrentaba a la Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC) y al citado Bank of America. En su demanda la SEC acusaba al Banco de haber ocultado información a sus accionistas al solicitar la aprobación de la adquisición de Merrill Lynch. Posteriormente, la SEC y la entidad acordaron poner fin al proceso a cambio del pago de una multa por importe de 33 millones de dólares. Entiendo que la efectividad de esa transacción reclamaba la aprobación del Juez.
La cuestión aparece planteada en los siguientes términos, que parten de la propia demanda de la SEC:
“The essence of the lie, according to the Complaint, was that Bank of America "represented that Merrill had agreed not to pay year-end performance bonuses or other discretionary incentive compensation to its executives prior to the closing of the irterger without Bank of America's consent [when] [i]n fact, contrary to the representation . .., Bank of America had agreed that Merrill could pay up to $5.8 billion — nearly 12% of the total consideration to be exchanged in the merger -- in discretionary year-end and other bonuses to Merrill executives for 2008."
El propio Juez expresaba la cuestión que se le planteaba en sus siguientes palabras, anticipando su criterio contrario a convalidar la transacción entre la SEC y Bank of America:
“In other words, the parties were proposing that the management of Bank of America - having allegedly hidden from the Bank's shareholders that as much as $5.8 billion of their money would be given as bonuses to the executives of Merrill who had run that company nearly into bankruptcy - would now settle the legal consequences of their lying by paying the S.E.C. $33 million more of their shareholders' money.
This proposal to have the victims of the violation pay an additional penalty for their own victimization was enough to give the Court pause. The Court therefore heard oral argument on August 10, 2 00 9 and received extensive written submissions on August 24, 2009 and September 9, 2009. Having now carefully reviewed all these materials, the Court concludes that the proposed Consent Judgment must be denied.
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Here, however, the Court, even upon applying the most deferential standard of review for which the parties argue, is forced to conclude that the proposed Consent Judgment is neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate”.
Me limitaré a transcribir algunas de las consideraciones más rotundas del razonamiento del Juez Rakoff:
“But all of this is beside the point because, if the Bank is innocent of lying to its shareholders, why is it prepared to pay $33 million of its shareholders' money as a penalty for lying to them?
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Nor is the proposed Consent Judgment reasonable. Obviously, a proposal that asks the victims to pay a fine for their having been victimized is, for all the reasons already given, as unreasonable as it is unfair. But the proposed Consent Judgment is unreasonable in numerous other respects as well.
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Finally, the proposed Consent Judgment is inadequate. The injunctive relief, as noted, is pointless. The fine, if looked at from the standpoint of the violation, is also inadequate, in that $33 million is a trivial penalty for a false statement that materially infected a multi-billion-dollar merger. But since the fine is imposed, not on the individuals putatively responsible, but on the shareholders, it is worse than pointless: it further victimizes the victims.
Oscar Wilde once famously said that a cynic is someone "who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892). The proposed Consent Judgment in this case suggests a rather cynical relationship between the parties: the S.E.C. gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger; the Bank's management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators. And all this is done at the expense, not only of the shareholders, but also of the truth”.
La resolución del Juez ha sido vista como la expresión de un especial rigor hacia una concreta operación, en el marzo de las constantes noticias sobre abusos retributivos. La información de The NYT recoge la opinión del Profesor Coffee (Universidad de Columbia), que aprecia que estamos ante una crítica hacia el comportamiento de la SEC a favor de permitir que los administradores de sociedades cotizadas pudieran “comprar su inmunidad con el dinero de sus accionistas”.
Leyendo posteriores entradas en el Law Blog se comprueba que existe una notable incertidumbre sobre lo que va a suceder y cómo va a desenvolverse el futuro juicio, que debería iniciarse a partir del 1 de febrero de 2010.
Madrid, 18 de septiembre de 2009
El blog de Juan Sánchez-Calero Guilarte