"Clearly, the performance of Merrill's top executives throughout Merrill's abysmal year in no way justifies significant bonuses for its top executives, including the CEO."

-- New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, in a letter to Merrill Lynch's (MER) board of directors, regarding CEO John Thain's request for a $10 million year-end bonus.

It worked. The top brass at Merrill agreed today to forgo bonuses. The money-losing brokerage, whose acquisition by Bank of America (BAC) was approved by shareholders last Friday, joins a growing crop of financial giants responding to a record-level uproar over executive compensation. Also giving up bonus pay this year: the top execs at Morgan Stanley (MS), Goldman Sachs (GS), Barclays (BCS), and Deutsche Bank. At Citigroup (C), the biggest recipient of the government's crisis-time largess, top executives have indicated that they're prepared to follow suit--meaning that they'd give up bonuses for the second year in a row. Can you imagine if they didn't join the no-bonus club? As Pattie notes in today's post on CEO apologies and other true confessions, the Citi brass is creeping toward acknowledgement of their disastrous missteps. -- Jessica Shambora