The New York Stock Exchange has fined Merrill Lynch $10m (€8.8m) for failing to deliver prospectuses and product descriptions to customers. It is only the second bank to be fined for such an offence.

The exchange said Merrill failed to deliver prospectuses for 64,000 sales of registered, open-ended mutual fund securities between October 2002 and March 2004. It said that the bank's failure to preserve or retain email impeded investigations by enforcement staff.