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Empresas y finanzas

Bank of America Merrill Lynch loss linked to options error: WSJ


    (Reuters) - Bank of America Merrill Lynch sustained a loss of nearly $10 million on Friday due to an "operational error" in handling of stock option trades known as dividend trades by the company's Merrill Pro unit, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

    The unit's clients were not affected and the error has been corrected, WSJ said, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

    Bank of America Merrill Lynch is a division of Bank of America Corp .

    Dividend trades involve placing trades a day before shares of a company or exchange traded fund issuer go "ex-dividend," seeking to capitalize on a typical drop in share prices after that date.

    Trading data released early Friday showed that nearly a quarter of call options on the SPDR exchange-traded fund were not exercised, suggesting a likely error in processing dividend trades in the contracts, the newspaper said.

    (Reporting by Karl Plume; Editing by Jackie Frank)