WASHINGTON, (REUTERS) - Bank of America Corp subsidiary Merrill Lynch will pay a US$42 million (S$56.9 million) penalty for lying to customers about how it handled their orders, the top US securities regulator said on Tuesday (June 19).

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Merrill Lynch admitted wrongdoing when it settled the charges.

Merrill Lynch told customers that it executed millions of dollars of orders internally but in truth had routed them to other broker-dealers, the SEC said. It stopped the practice in 2013 but then hid the misconduct, the SEC said.