Bank of America Settles With Monoline Insurer FGIC Over Second-Lien Mortgage Securities

By Christina Rexrode 

Bank of America Corp. said Wednesday that it settled mortgage-backed securities claims with the monoline insurer Financial Guaranty Insurance Co., or FGIC. The bank said it had settled seven of the nine trust settlements and expected to pay a total of about $950 million. The bank also said that the expenses were covered by legal reserves.

Legal expenses pushed Bank of America to a first-quarter loss. The bank said it had a $6 billion litigation expense for the quarter, up from $2.2 billion in the same period a year ago.

Of that, about $3.6 billion was related to the bank's settlement last month with the Federal Housing Finance Agency, where the bank agreed to pay some $9.5 billion to settle accusations that it had misled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac about the quality of mortgage-backed securities it was selling. The bank had previously estimated that the FHFA settlement would cut earnings by about $3.7 billion before taxes.

The bank has now settled with four of the five monoline insurers that had sued the bank over mortgage-backed securities.

Write to Christina Rexrode at [e-mail]

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