Kenneth D Lewis, the chief executive of Bank of America, testified before a congressional committee on Thursday that he was pressured by the US government late last year to purchase Merrill Lynch. But, he said, without government pressure, the bank might still have completed the deal. “It’s hard for me to project what I ultimately would have done,” Lewis said when asked if he would have walked away from the purchase. “But, yes, we were strongly considering it.” The twists and turns of Bank of America’s marriage to Merrill Lynch have attracted scrutiny since early this year when the government provided a second round of bailout money to help the bank absorb Merrill’s surprise losses.

New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo has been investigating bonuses paid by Merrill and questions of whether company’s losses should have been disclosed before the merger was finalised. Shareholders, angry over the price Bank of America paid for Merrill, voted to strip Lewis of his chairmanship in the spring, and regulators have pressured the bank to shake-up its board and management.

Lewis’s honesty and intentions were called into question on Thursday morning at the hearing held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “No matter how great Bank of America is doing today, the means does not justify the end,” said Elijah Cummings, a democrat from Maryland. “In other words, through these transactions, we must have honesty, transparency and integrity, period.”

Lewis was careful not to strongly criticise government officials and described them in his opening statement as “people of good intentions”. The two officials that have been most associated with the situation are Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury secretary Henry Paulson. The committee is planning to call them both to testify next. There are several questions still looming over the merger, including exactly when Merrill’s losses were known, whether the bank could have backed out of the deal and what role the government played in influencing the outcome. Lewis said that both Paulson and Bernanke pressured him to stick to the deal.

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