NEW YORK (AP) ó Bank of America Corp. will defer year-end bonuses paid to employees in its capital markets and investment banking units, according to a report by the Financial Times.

Employees that were to receive bonuses of more than $50,000 will not get a year-end bonus for 2008.

Instead, those employees will receive the deferred payments in one-third increments in 2010, 2011 and 2012, according to the Financial Times report that cited unnamed executives familiar with the situation.
A spokesman for Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America was not immediately available to comment on the report.

The reported deferring of bonuses would stand in stark contrast to bonuses paid out in December by Bank of America’s newly acquired investment bank, Merrill Lynch & Co. Just days before Bank of America’s purchase of New York-based Merrill closed, Merrill handed out bonuses to its employees for the year. Bank of America has said it had no authority over Merrill’s ability to pay the bonuses because it was still a separate company in December.

The bonuses were paid as Merrill was also preparing to report a fourth-quarter loss of more than $15 billion and Bank of America was discussing receiving further capital from the federal government to help absorb the losses and troubled assets it was inheriting as part of the Merrill purchase.

Bank of America eventually received a second round of support from the government. The bank has received a total of $45 billion in capital from the government, and guarantees to protect the bank against losses on tens of billions of dollars in risky assets.

The bonuses have become a point of contention for Bank of America as news of the payments came just hours before former Merrill CEO John Thain agreed to resign from his new post as head of wealth management at the combined bank.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has subpoenaed Thain and Bank of America’s chief administrative officer, J. Steele Alphin, amid an investigation into the timing of the Merrill bonuses.