A New York state judge on Wednesday rejected a bid by Bank of America Corp. (BAC) to keep details confidential about individuals who received bonuses at Merrill Lynch & Co. on the eve of its merger with the Charlotte, N.C., bank last year.

In an order Wednesday, New York State Supreme Court Justice Bernard J. Fried in Manhattan denied a motion by Bank of America for a protective order modifying a subpoena by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to include a confidentiality provision, and denied a motion to separately intervene and put a similar confidentiality restriction on testimony by John A. Thain, Merrill Lynch's former chief executive.

The bank had asked the judge to prevent Cuomo from publicly releasing the names of individuals who received bonuses and how much they made.

In his ruling, the judge found Bank of America didn't make efforts to keep compensation data confidential, other than to encourage employees not to discuss pay in the workplace. There's also no evidence the bank took measures to prevent employees from sharing compensation information with third parties, the judge said.

"The record indicates that Bank of America has not taken the kind of measures to protect the secrecy of its employee compensation information that one would expect it to have taken if this information were a trade secret," the judge said.

The judge also found New York's Martin Act gives the attorney general the discretion to decide whether to keep information he gathers in the course of an investigation secret or make it public.

Cuomo's office is probing disclosures related to the timing and nature of more than $3.6 billion in bonus payments made shortly before Bank of America's merger with Merrill Lynch closed last year.

The attorney general's office has subpoenaed the bank for a list of names of 39,000 people who received bonuses. The bank had agreed to produce a list of the 200 highest bonuses, but refused to provide the names.

The bank now has to turn over the names and could do so as early as Thursday.

A Bank of America spokesman didn't immediately have a comment when reached Wednesday.

Bank of America had claimed publicly releasing details about who received bonuses and how much the awards were would cause it harm and put it at a competitive disadvantage. The bank had claimed the information was proprietary data and some employees might leave because of privacy or security concerns if the list were made public.

A temporary confidentiality order on Thain's testimony had been in place until the judge made his ruling.

Thain was forced out in January following his handling of the investment bank's fourth-quarter loss. In a recent regulatory filing, Merrill Lynch reported a fourth-quarter loss of $15.84 billion, $500 million more than prior estimates.

"Today's decision in the Bank of America case is a victory for taxpayers. Let the sun shine in," Cuomo said in a statement. "Justice Fried's decision will now lift the shroud of secrecy surrounding the $3.6 billion in premature bonuses Merrill Lynch rushed out in early December. Taxpayers demand and deserve transparency and now they will finally get it."

-By Chad Bray, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-227-2017; chad.bray@dowjones.com
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