Reuters Legal-
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman still wants a say in whether Bank of America’s proposed $8.5 billion settlement with Countrywide mortgage-backed securities investors should be approved by a state-court judge. The AG’s new intervention motion, filed more than seven months after Schneiderman first moved to join the case, makes the exact same arguments as the old motion, which was pending before New York State Supreme Court Justice Barbara Kapnick when the settlement was removed from state court to Manhattan federal court last August. There’s just one notable exception: The AG’s office “deleted” its explosive fraud counterclaims against Countrywide MBS trustee Bank of New York Mellon. Is playing nice (or, at least, nicer) enough to win the AG a seat at the table?
Those fraud counterclaims, as you’ll surely recall, caused quite a stir when Schneiderman’s office tacked them onto its original motion to intervene. One Manhattan business development official questioned the wisdom of attacking a trustee that was at least making an effort to respond to investors’ concerns and warned that the AG was endangering the city’s standing as the preferred home of financial institutions. BNY Mellon and the institutional investors backing the proposed $8.5 billion settlement responded in kind to the AG’s intervention motion, asserting that Scheiderman didn’t have standing to intervene because he’s not a Countrywide MBS investor.
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