The Securities and Exchange Commission, led by Chairman Mary Schapiro, is committed to providing shareholders with a more direct way to nominate directors of publicly held companies. In fact, according to Business Week, the agency tried to force “proxy access” upon Bank of America when negotiating the recent $150 settlement over the bank’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch. Although proxy access was ultimately excluded from the proposed settlement, Schapiro had hoped to use it as a test case to prove that the rationale was sound. Currently, shareholders who wish to challenge a company’s board nominees must distribute their own ballots. This process, according to Schapiro, major investors, and pension funds, is cost-prohibitive.

According to the New York Times, the Securities and Exchange Commission reached a long-awaited settlement with Bank of America over accusations that the financial giant withheld information from shareholders about Merrill Lynch losses when BofA took over the firm. Yet in the wake of the $150 million settlement, which was reached after a federal judge excoriated the SEC for attempting to settle for $33 million, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed civil fraud charges against former BofA CEO Kenneth Lewis and CFO Joe Price. The case stands out in sharp relief against the SEC’s case, which focused on Bank of America as a corporate entity, rather than the culpability of individual officers.