Reuters reports that New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has subpoenaed five current or former Bank of America main board directors, as he continues on his quest to find out who knew what about those 2008 Merrill Lynch bonus payments. The five individuals, William Barnet III, John Collins, Tommy Franks, Walter Massey, and Thomas May, are all said to have been members of the bank's audit committee at the time the bonuses were paid.

In the meantime, The New York Times reports that Bank of New York Mellon has settled that $22.5bn money laundering lawsuit with the Russian government - just by paying $14m towards the government's legal costs. As an 'act of goodwill' the bank has also agreed to provide (on favourable terms) a $400m credit line to Russian state banks to finance import and export business. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.

And The Wall Street Journal reports that Citi CEO Vikram Pandit, speaking at a Barclays banking conference in New York  this week, said that he fully expected Morgan Stanley to eventually take full control of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, the joint brokerage venture the firms entered into earlier this year.

Reuters reports that the US government has got another month to either indict or settle with Sergey Aleynikov, the IT programmer accused of stealing a Goldman Sachs proprietary trading code earlier this year. Settlement talks are believed to have been under way for some time. The programmer worked for Goldman for a period of two years, before moving on to a hedge fund earlier this year. He is now out of work.

The new agency also reports that Michael Paese, a former staffer on the US House of Representatives Financial Services Committee who became a top lobbyist for Goldman Sachs, has been prohibited from communicating with members of the committee, or staff, for another year (he left in September 2008). A spokesperson for the Committee said: 'Out of an abundance of caution due to the nature of financial regulation reform, the Chairman (Barney Frank) has extended Mr Paese's recusal for another year'.

The Wall Street Journal also reports that Frederick Bowers, a former Lehman Brothers broker, was sentenced to 3 years probation Tuesday, after pleading guilty to criminal charges relating to insider trading. The broker admitted receiving information about impending M&A deals from a co-worker's wife, who worked at PR firm Brunswick. He was ordered to pay a $15,000 fine and $12,000 in forfeiture. 

And La Tribune reports that Natixis has met its target of 286 voluntary redundancies from its investment banking unit. 75 staff were turned down.

Finally, The New York Daily News reports that accused fraudster Allen Stanford says that he is broke, and will be represented by a public defender as he prepares for his trial. Stanford, who was refused bail and remains in jail pending his trial, had his assets frozen in February.

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