BizAims

Prior to 1999, the Bank of America that we know today was known under the name of NationsBank. Even earlier the organization was called North Carolina National Bank. As the institution branched out of its headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, its name was abbreviated to NCNB. After NationsBank purchased BankAmerica with its headquarters in San Francisco, the corporation changed its name into Bank of America.

The Roots

In 1904 a man named Amadeo Giannini founded the Bank of Italy which operated in San Francisco. The Bank of Italy mainly based on catering to immigrants. The founder himself was the child of Fava/Stanghellini family. His father was shot dead after he tried to collect on a $10 debt.

Orra E. Monnette was the president and founder of Bank of America, Los Angeles somewhere in the 1920s. At this time Amadeo Giannini decided to propose Monnette a merger. It is worth mentioning that in 1920 the Bank of America, located in Los Angeles, registered an impressive increase mainly because of its successful strategy in developing an improved branch banking system. The two entities agreed on merger and in 1929 the new institution appeared, and its name was Bank of America. It was controlled by Giannini as its head and Monnette as co-Chair.

At the same time the goal of Giannini was to create a national bank and expand its activity to the western states and into the insurance industry. The bank would be under the wing of his own company called Transamerica Corporation. The Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 had a passage that did not allow banks to own non-banking subsidiaries, including insurance companies.

Transamerica was separated from Bank of America. The organization carried on its activity in the insurance business. Nevertheless, the Bank of America was not allowed to perform its interstate banking actions, due to the prohibition imposed by the federal banking regulator. The prohibition forced the domestic branches of Bank of America, located outside of California, into a separate organization, which was named First Interstate Bancorp. The latter was purchased by Wells Fargo and Company back in 1996. Only in the 1980s, with the help of a change made in federal banking legislation and regulation, the Bank of America was allowed to go outside California and enlarge its banking activity throughout the country.

BankAmerica Corporation, created with the goal of owning Bank of America and all its subsidiaries.

VISA

In 1958 Bank of America decided to introduce BankAmericard, which was a breakthrough credit card program. The event took place in Fresno, California. The idea of the revolutionary program came first to a bank branch manager who once stopped near a local store and saw clerks, who, while being in the back room, prepared monthly bills for the customers. He came to a conclusion that it is quite inefficient to waste a lot of time and money in order to collect and prepare the bills which quite often were for insignificant amounts. The banker started contemplating on whether the process could be more effectively centralized with the help of his bank computer, which would get the bills ready in off-hours.

Initially the company aimed towards providing the system throughout California. In 1965 the organization started subscribing licensing agreements with several banks located outside of California. Throughout the next 11 years different banks authorized the card system from the Californian bank. Thus a network of banks, which supported the BankAmericard system throughout the country, was created. BankAmericard changed its name into VISA in 1975. In order to provide competition to BankAmericard a number of banks from California decided to introduce Master Charge, which is today known as MasterCard.

The Great Expansion of BankAmerica

The expansion of BankAmerica started in 1983, when it purchased the Seafirst Corporation based in Seattle, Washington. In addition, BankAmerica purchased the Seattle-First National Bank, which was the banking subsidiary owned by Seafirst Corporation. After becoming insolvent, because of a number of bad loans to the oil companies, Seafirst Corporation was at a high risk of being seized by the federal government. Until merging with NationsBank in 1998, the new branch was operated by BankAmerica as Seafirst and not as Bank of America.

Due to a series of bad loans place in the Third World, and especially in Latin America, BankAmerica registered critical losses in 1986 and 1987. Although the organization fired its Chief Executive, Sam Armacost, the latter blamed everything on A.W. Clausen, the man who was CEO prior to Armacost. Bank's huge losses led to a significant decrease in BankAmerica stock, thus the company was at high risk of being taken over. In 1986 First Interstate Bancorp, based in Los Angeles, set a bid to acquire BankAmerica, but the latter rejected the bid shortly after selling Charles Schwab and Co. to its initial owner Mr. Schwab and selling one of its subsidiaries, FinanceAmerica, to Chrysler. Although the price for the company's share went down to reach $8, BankAmerica managed to come back and in 1992 it became one of the largest gainers for the last fifty years.

The evolution of BankAmerica registered a big step forward when in 1992 the company purchased its Californian competitor, Security Pacific Corporation along with its subsidiary Security Pacific National Bank, based in California, as well as a number of banks in Arizona, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. All of these banks were previously bought by Security Pacific in 1980s. At that time it was considered the biggest bank acquirement in history.

Two ears after BankAmerica acquired Security Pacific, the company managed to buy Continental Illinois National Bank of Trust Co. located in Chicago. Back then there was no other bank which would posses enough resources to help Continental. Federal Government managed the bank for about ten years. In the last decade of the twentieth century, Illinois showed an extreme regulation of branch banking, thus until the 21^st century Bank of America Illinois represented a single-unit bank. Somewhat later, the bank decided to bring its national lending department to Chicago with the goal of setting up a financial base in the area. A number of important acquisitions made BankAmerica Corporation once again the largest holding organization in the United States in terms of deposits. However, in 1997, Bank of America lost its leading position to NationsBank Corporation, located in North Carolina, and a year later it fell to the third place, being surpassed by First Union Corp. based in the same North Carolina.

In the same year the bank was acquired by NationsBank and its base was moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. It was a $64.8 billion deal. Despite the fact that the deal was de facto an acquirement of BankAmerica Corporation, officials structured the deal as merger. Thus, after the merger of BankAmerica Corporation with NationsBank, the name of the organization changed into Bank of America Corporation. In addition, Bank of America NT&SA became to Bank of America, N.A.

Currently the bank continues to work under Federal Charter 13044 that was granted to Bank of Italy back in 1927, on March 1.

After the merger, the new company, called Bank of America got together assets of $570 billion and 4,800 branches located in 22 states across the country.

Bank of America in the 21^st Century

Ken Lewis became the new Chief Executive of Bank of America, replacing in 2001 Hugh McColl. His strategy was different from the one used by his predecessor. In 2005 Bank of America stated that it was going to purchase MBNA, which was the largest independent credit card issuer in the world. It was a $35 billion deal in cash and stock. The announcement was made on June 30, the final approval of the Federal Reserve Board was given on December 15 and the merger was finally closed in the first day of 2006. After the purchase Bank of America became the leader in the field of credit cards issue both at home and abroad.

Another great acquirement announcement from Bank of America took place on November 20, 2006, when the company stated it looks forward to purchase The United States Trust Company, which had approximately $100 billion of assets under management and a huge experience of more than 150 years. On July 2007 the deal was closed. The same year Bank of American received the approval from the Federal Reserve to purchase ABN AMRO North America, LaSalle Bank Corporation and LaSalle Corporate Finance from ABN AMRO, which was one of the biggest banks in Europe operating in 63 countries worldwide. It was a $21 billion deal that was completed on October 1. After the acquisition Bank of America expanded its influence in Illinois, Michigan and Indiana. Its presence increased by 411 branches, 17,000 customers of commercial banks, 1.4 million retail clients and 1,500 ATMs. As the largest bank in Chicago market, Bank of America had 197 offices, surpassing JPMorgan Chase in terms of deposit share.

On May 5, 2008, both LaSalle Bank and LaSalle Bank Midwest branches became known as Bank of America.

In order to prevent potential bankruptcy of Countrywide Financial, a financial marketing and service holding company that mainly focuses on residential mortgage banking, Bank of America announce on August 23, 2007 its intention to purchase the company. On July 1, 2008 the acquisition closed, providing Bank of America with a huge market share of mortgage business. In addition, the company gained access to Countrywide Financial's knowledge, technology and employees to service mortgages. Despite the rumors that Countrywide Financial was close to bankruptcy, the company's officials denied such information.

Due to the fact the FBI investigates a case linked with Countrywide on an allegedly fraud in home loans and mortgages, Bank of America announced that by 2009 the company would be legitimately affiliated to Countrywide Financial. Bank of America acquired Countrywide Financial Corporation on July 1, 2008, thus it became the leading mortgage originator and servicer in the United States, possessing between 20 and 25 percent of the entire home loan market.

Latest Acquisition

One of the latest big operations of Bank of America is the purchase of Merrill Lynch. The purchase is expected to be a $50 billion all-stock deal. It is also expected to make Bank of America world's biggest company that provides financial services.

In November of 2008 Federal Reserve Board endorsed the notice of Bank of America Corp., Charlotte, North Carolina to purchase Merrill Lynch & Company, Inc. New York, and by this means indirectly buy Merrill Lynch Bank & Trust Co., FSB, New York, New York; Merrill Lynch Bank USA, Salt Lake City, Utah; and Merrill Lynch Yatirim Bank A.S., Istanbul, Turkey.

It is worth mentioning that currently Bank of America is the biggest depository institution in the United States, having a total of joint assets of $1.8 trillion. The Corporation manages deposits of about $774.2 billion, which is around 10.8 percent of the total sum of deposits of American insured depository institutions. The largest depository institution in America monitors six insured depository institutions that work in 31 states and the District of Columbia.

The total sum of assets of Merrill Lynch reaches $875 billion. The institution manages deposits of about $77.8 billion, which represents approximately 1.1 percent of the total sum of deposits of American insured depository institutions. Merrill Lynch Bank and Merrill Lynch USA operate in 9 sates. After the proposal will be consumed, Bank of America would preserve its status of the largest depository institutions in the country, having consolidated assets totaling about $2.7 trillion. The organization would also control deposits of about $852 billion, which is more or less 11.9 percent of the total amount of deposits of American insured depository institutions.