Commonwealth Bank made an admission, of sorts, and paid a $100,000 fine over the episode in December 2008 when Merrill Lynch (briefed by CBA) and perhaps some institutional investors contacted by Merrill Lynch knew material information on a projected rise in the bank's impairment expense for the coming year.On the Tuesday afternoon in question CBA commissioned Merrill Lynch, in a non-underwritten deal, to market $1.65 billion in new shares at $27 a share, and intended to complement a $350 million capital raising already sold by CBA, through Merrill, under a more conservative capital raising announced a week earlier.According to the version of events publicised yesterday by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, CBA's management knew around 3pm that afternoon that the bad debt expense would be equivalent to around 61 basis points, and up from a projection of between 40 and 50 basis points publicised a month earlier.By around 4pm Merrill Lynch management and staff on the dealing desk knew this as well, though whether investors contacted by Merrill gleaned this news nugget in not made clear in the ASIC version. The facts on this point were in dispute at the time this flap erupted ten months ago.CBA took until after 7pm to release the revised assessment of loan losses to the Australian Securities Exchange, to the consternation of many investors and analysts.The following day Merrill Lynch lost its mandate to UBS, which underwrote, and sold, the full $2 billion in new shares sought by CBA, though at a lower price per share than talked about the day before.CBA in its announcement yesterday on this matter asserted that it "elected to comply with the infringement notice" from ASIC and that "compliance … is not an admission of guilt or liability".Penalties of this kind are pretty rare anywhere in the Australian securities market, and a little more embarrassing when affecting one of the biggest companies in the country.And as an aside, The Australian's columnist John Durie in his comment on the topic today - switching CBA controversies - estimated that CBA will incur losses in the order of $300 million in making compensation payments to customers of Storm Financial with margin loans and home loans from the bank.