The Times reports that Barclays President Bob Diamond is said to have turned down the opportunity to talk to Bank of America about its vacant CEO position.

According to the newspaper Diamond, 58, was shortlisted by the bank's recruitment committee, but declined to meet up when approached.

In the meantime, The New York Times is running an extract from Andrew Ross Sorkin's 'Too Big To Fail', which is published today by Viking. The extract details a meeting Lehman Brothers CEO had at Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack's house in the early days of the financial crisis last year, when Fuld kind of suggested a merger, or 'something', which could have involved a Morgan Stanley purchase of asset management arm Neuberger Berman, or the sale of Lehman's Seventh Avenue HQ (which was once Morgan Stanley's home). James Gorman, Morgan Stanley's CEO-elect (who was also present at the meeting) is said to have described the meeting as 'delusional'.

Fuld is also said later met with Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, in an attempt to get Lewis to buy Lehman at $25-a-share (it was then trading around $18), but Lewis reflected on it and said: 'I don't think this is going to work for us'. Lewis is said to have preferred doing a deal with either Merrill Lynch or Morgan Stanley at the time, and eventually, of course, backed the wrong horse.

Finally, Bloomberg reports that an e-mail released by Bank of America pursuant to the probe into the Merrill Lynch acquisition being undertaken by the US House Oversight Committee has bank CFO Joe Price claiming that 'the chairman of the Federal Reserve (Ben Bernanke) indicated it (the Merrill deal) would be structured in a manner such that BAC stock should go up when announced'.

The stock closed at $33.74 the Friday before the deal was made public, closing the following Monday at $26.55. It then fell 47% in 6 trading days to January 16th, as the extent of Merrill Lynch losses were revealed, hitting a 52-week intra-day low of $2.53 in March this year, before recovering. The stock closed 0.58% down Monday at $17.16.

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