Bank of America Corp. is close to finalizing a deal to pay $8.5 billion to settle claims by a group of investors that the bank sold them poor-quality mortgage-backed securities that went sour when the housing market tanked, according to a person familiar with the settlement talks.

The Charlotte, North Carolina, bank was continuing talks late Tuesday with the group, which includes the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Pimco Investment Management, the world's largest bondholder, and Blackrock Financial Management. It is expected to announce an agreement as early as Wednesday, the person said on condition of anonymity because the matter was still developing.

The deal comes eight months after the group fired off a letter to Bank of America demanding that it repurchase $47 billion in mortgages that its Countrywide unit sold to them in the form of bonds. The investors have argued that Countrywide's practice of modifying loans found to have faulty paperwork or those written outside of normal underwriting standards breached signed agreements with the investors. By continuing to service bad loans rather than speeding up foreclosures, the group has claimed that Countrywide ran up servicing fees, enriching itself at the expense of investors. The New York Fed is involved because it took over assets held by American International Group Inc., which faltered under the weight of bad home loans that it insured.

Bank of America, which paid $4 billion for Countrywide in 2008, has dismissed suggestions that its handling of loan modifications and other efforts to prevent foreclosure have violated the terms of the mortgage-backed securities that the investors hold. In November, CEO Brian Moynihan said he was in day-to-day "hand-to-hand combat" with investors' demands.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that states cannot limit drug manufacturers' use of information about which prescription drugs doctors like to prescribe.

The court voted 6-3 to strike down a Vermont data-mining law aimed at boosting the use of generic drugs by controlling the flow of information about brand-name medications. The ruling imperils similar laws in Maine and New Hampshire.

The laws prevent the sale of information about individual doctors' prescribing records without the doctors' permission.

Pharmacies get that information when they fill prescriptions. They sell the information, without patient names, to data mining companies that, in turn, provide drug makers with a detailed look at what drugs doctors choose for their patients.

Drug company sales representatives can use the information to tailor their pitch to individual doctors.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion that the Vermont law violates the speech rights of the data-mining and pharmaceutical companies.

Kennedy said that law grew out of a desire to control health care costs by increasing the use of generic drugs. But he said, "the state cannot engage in content-based discrimination to advance its own side of a debate."

In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said the law should have been upheld as a constitutional regulation of business activity. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan also signed on to Breyer's dissent.