Former Merrill president wins $1.2M award

The good news for Ahmass Fakahany, a former top executive of Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. is that March 24, a Finra panel awarded him $1.2 million in an arbitration claim against his former firm. The bad news is that he was seeking $70 million. Mr. Fakahany, formerly chief financial officer of Merrill Lynch and later co-president, helped oversee risk management at the company as losses began to mount on subprime mortgages and bonds in 2007. He resigned from Merrill Lynch in January 2008 when John A. Thain came in to take over the troubled firm. Ultimately, the Wall Street firm suffered from huge write-offs related to mortgage-backed bonds. Mr. Fakahany filed the arbitration claim against Merrill Lynch in December 2008, pressing his former employer to pay him for work and make good on promises. In an interview with Bloomberg, John Orsini, an attorney representing Mr. Fakahany, disputed the $70 million figure that arbitrators listed on the order. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. panel's decision was “totally incorrect,” he said, declining to elaborate or comment on the ruling. “This was a compensation dispute that predated Bank of America [Corp.'s] acquisition of Merrill Lynch,” William Halldin, a BofA spokesman, said in a statement. The arbitration award provided no details of the events that led Mr. Fakahany to file the claim. E-mail Dan Jamieson at [email protected].