BofA Board Urged by ICP to End Deception Re: Fairfax Tax Deal
July 21 2008 - 8:53AM
PR Newswire (US)
NEW YORK, July 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Dear Bank of America Corp. Board
of Directors: On February 4, 2008, we sent you a detailed letter, a
copy of which can be found at http://www.post233.com/, outlining
how Bank of America Corp. ("BOA", NYSE: BAC) assisted its client
Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. ("Fairfax ", NYSE: FFH) in an
offshore tax avoidance transaction (the "Transaction") that
deceived the public markets and deprived the U.S. Government of
hundreds of millions of dollars in owed corporate tax. We received
a written reply, dated February 20, 2008, from your Deputy General
Counsel William C. Caccamise who declined to respond citing a
company policy whereby, "Bank of America does not discuss, or
comment on, client transactions or relationships." Aside from its
utter lack of sincerity, this response is troublesome given Mr.
Caccamise's intimate involvement in the very same Transaction that
was the subject our February 4th letter. Indeed, the original
Transaction documents show Mr. Caccamise as authorized signatory on
the Master Note Purchase Agreement, Pledge Agreement and Note
Purchase Confirmations #1 and #2 executed March 4, 2003 on behalf
of two BOA subsidiaries, Bank of America Securities, LLC and NMS
Services Cayman, Inc. It strains credulity to believe that the
person who signed onto this problematic Transaction on behalf of
BOA can impartially assess the propriety of BOA's actions. Aside
from this issue, the February 20, 2008 reply fails entirely to
discharge BOA's obligations of candor and truthfulness to the
market. As we set forth in our original letter, BOA's participation
in the Transaction has had damaging effects far beyond the scope of
a single "client relationship." For instance, as part of its
participation in the Transaction, BOA has failed to disclose (a)
its short position in 25% of Odyssey Re's ("Odyssey", NYSE: ORH)
public float as required by NYSE Rule 421, (b) the manner in which
it borrowed and maintained this short position for 3.5 years, (c)
the size and timing of all Odyssey share purchases made by Fairfax
on behalf of BOA in the four months leading up to Fairfax's
December 2006 sale of 10.1 million Odyssey shares and (d) how the
Transaction resulted in BOA owning 2.9 million Odyssey shares worth
$103 million, when it took no risk, spent no money and received
over $10 million in fees.(1) We find it contradictory, given BOA's
"policy" of allegiance to its clients, that it would hide much of
this material information while issuing over $1.2 billion of
Fairfax related debt and equity securities to its other clients
during the 24 months following the Transaction. The U.S. Senate
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' issued a Staff Report on
Tax Haven Banks and U.S. Tax Compliance on July 17, 2008 stating
that "each year, the United States loses an estimated $100 billion
in tax revenues due to offshore tax abuses ... A related issue is
the extent to which financial institutions in tax havens may be
facilitating international tax evasion." BOA's assistance in the
misappropriation of over $400 million U.S. tax dollars, in this
case by a Canadian corporation on the brink of financial collapse,
is a very public, regulatory issue. Fairfax and BOA have repeatedly
rebuffed our requests for disclosure on numerous critical aspects
of the Transaction. We once again urge you to fulfill your
obligation as Board members by independently investigating the
impropriety of this transaction and remediate the ongoing
disclosure deficiencies. INSTITUTIONAL CREDIT PARTNERS LLC
Sincerely, William F. Gahan (1) BOA did not own the Subject Stock
prior to the Transaction. Instead it borrowed and sold the shares
in an undisclosed short sale to Fairfax. In November 2006 BOA
exercised its rights to exchange $68.1 million face value of notes
for 2.9 million shares of Odyssey stock worth $103 million. Fairfax
US returned these shares to BOA and BOA was expected to return them
to the original lenders. However, the Transaction inexplicably
resulted in BOA reporting to own 2.9 million Odyssey shares as of
year end 2007, 1,741,000 of which have been sold as of March 31,
2008. DISCLOSURE: Institutional Credit Partners, LLC ("ICP") and
its affiliates hold investments from which they will profit in the
event of a decline in the creditworthiness of Fairfax and/or
Odyssey. ICP may change its investments from time to time,
including the extent nature and form of these investments. However,
ICP anticipates holding, for the foreseeable future, investments
whose value will increase in the event of a decline in the
creditworthiness of Fairfax and/or Odyssey. ICP has made and will
continue to make these investment decisions on the basis of its
analysis, beliefs, and assumptions that it believes to be
reasonable. Any statements contained herein are intended solely for
informational purposes. All allegations concerning any individual
or entity are just that, allegations, until proven in a court of
law. The reader is directed to the source documents to confirm all
statements contained herein. DATASOURCE: Institutional Credit
Partners, LLC CONTACT: Pen Pendleton, of Institutional Credit
Partners, LLC, +1-212-371-5999 Web site: http://www.icpcapital.com/
http://www.post233.com/
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