Financial News

LONDON (ShareCast) - Facing mounting pressure from multiple investigations, Bank of America (NYSE: IKJ - news) 's board has voted to reveal the legal advice that the bank received late last year in its merger with Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER - news) , the New York Times (NYSE: NYT - news) report.

The Obama administration has shelved a plan to raise more than $200bn in new taxes on multinational companies following a blitz of complaints from businesses. A contingent of Silicon Valley chief executives, for example, travelled to Washington in late September to speak out against the proposal to change how the federal government taxes overseas profits, according to the Wall Street Journal.

AIG said it will sell its life insurance unit in Taiwan to a consortium led by Hong Kong-based investment company Primus Financial Holdings for $2.15bn, in the largest sale globally of an AIG business so far, writes the Wall Street Journal.

Ghana's national oil company is threatening to scupper ExxonMobil's bid to buy a stake in the country's Jubilee field, the largest deepwater oilfield in Africa. The national oil company is pushing CNOOC (0883.HK - news) , the Chinese state-owned company, to make a counterbid for Kosmos, the US-based company that Exxon last week dec¬ided to acquire, says the FT.

The White House's top economic adviser took aim at Republican criticism of President Obama's economic recovery policies on Monday, delivering a sharply worded letter to lawmakers that credited the administration with pulling the nation back from an "abyss" and faulted the record of recent GOP presidents on the economy, reports the Washington Post (NYSE: WPO - news) .

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG - news) said that Arthur Levinson has resigned from the Internet search leader's board, averting a potential showdown with government regulators over his overlapping job as a director for computer and gadget maker Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL - news) , according to USA Today.

The new General Motors (NYSE: GM - news) is showing some old GM traits, say several industry analysts who question the automaker's plans to increase North American production next year by about 45%. When an automaker builds more cars and trucks than consumers want, as GM has done in the past, it is forced to discount the vehicles, which cuts into profits. Some experts wonder if GM is doing that again, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Wealthy US taxpayers, concerned about an Internal Revenue Service crackdown on the use of secret overseas bank accounts as tax havens, are rushing to meet a Thursday deadline to disclose those accounts or face possible criminal prosecution, writes the LA Times.

The technology and telecommunications industries are bracing for stepped-up antitrust oversight by the Obama administration's Justice Department. Christine Varney, the head of the department's antitrust division, vowed in a speech this year that her office will take a tough look at potential abuses of market power across some of the nation's biggest industries, including high tech and telecom, says the Chicago Tribune.