Bank of America Corp.’s $8.5 billion settlement with mortgage-bond investors, including BlackRock Inc. and Pacific Investment Management Co., was largely approved by a New York state judge, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday. Bank of New York Mellon Corp., the trustee for more than 500 residential mortgage-securitization trusts, filed a petition in June 2011 seeking approval of the settlement, which aimed to resolve claims that the loans backing the bonds didn’t meet their promised quality. For Bank of America, the settlement is part of Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan’s efforts to resolve liabilities tied to faulty mortgages that have cost the company at least $50 billion since the financial crisis, most inherited from its 2008 purchase of Countrywide Financial Corp.
