Bank Of America

#redirect Bank of America

Bank of America

Bank of America (BofA) , based in Charlotte, North Carolina, is the third largest bank in the United States of America, measured in assets. It was founded in 1874 in Charlotte as Commercial Financial Bank. ==Corporate History== The Bank of America (BoA) that exists today was the result of the purchase (which was structured as a merger) of the San Francisco-based BankAmerica by Charlotte-based NationsBank in 1998. As a part of the merger, NationsBank took the Bank of America name. ===NationsBank=== NationsBank was a large banking corporation based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Commercial National Bank (CNB), the earliest forerunner of NationsBank, opened for business in Charlotte in 1874. In 1957, Commercial National merged with its longtime rival in Charlotte, American Trust Co., forming American commercial Bank. American Commercial changed its name to North Carolina National Bank (NCNB) in 1960 after acquiring of Greensboro-based Security National Bank. In the early 1970s, it reorganized as the leading subsidiary of NCNB Corporation. NCNB expanded beyond North Carolina for the first time in 1982, when it bought Lake City, Florida-based First National Bank of Lake City. Hugh McColl became Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NCNB the following year. In 1988, NCNB's assets grew to $60 billion ($60,000,000,000) after it bought the failed First RepublicBank of Dallas, Texas from the FDIC. NCNB became NationsBank in 1991 after acquiring Atlanta-based C&S/Sovran Corp. NationsBank's assets grew to $118 billion following the merger. In 1996, NationsBank acquired St. Louis-based Boatmen's Bancshares for $9.6 billion. The resultant bank became the largest in the American South, with assets of $225 billion and 2,600 branches, stretching from North Carolina to New Mexico. The following year, NationsBank acquired Florida's largest bank, Jacksonville-based Barnett Bank, for $15.5 billion, increasing the company's total assets to $284 billion. ===BankAmerica=== The California-based BankAmerica was established in 1929 as an outcome of the merger beetween Amadeo Giannini's Bank of Italy (USA) and BankAmerica, Los Angeles. By merging with BankAmerica of Los Angeles, Giannini, based in San Francisco, gained access to the Los Angeles market and rights to the name 'BankAmerica'.^#Footnotes. While the names of many nationally chartered banks end with the initials 'N.A.' (National Association), Giannini picked a unique ending, National Trust and Savings Association, or NT&SA, because he wanted the name to highlight the different functions of the bank. BoA was the only NT&SA in the country. The bank was soon the largest in California. Giannini also sought to build a national bank, expanding into most of the western states as well as the insurance industry, under the aegis of his holding company, Transamerica. However, federal regulators put a stop to this interstate banking activity, and BankAmerica's banks outside California were forced into a separate company that eventually became First Interstate Bancorp, which was acquired by Wells Fargo Corp. in 1996. It was not until the 1980s that BankAmerica would again expand consumer banking outside California. With the passage of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, banks were prohibited from owning non-banking subsidiaries such as insurance companies, and BankAmerica and Transamerica were separated, with the latter company continuing in the insurance business. California was the nation's fastest growing state during the post-World War II boom, with the highest use of checking accounts (partially driven by many soldiers being paid via bank accounts during World War II), resulting in BankAmerica being swamped by checks. By 1949, the branches had to close at 2:00pm in order to process the bookkeeping by 5:00 p.m. To cope with the transaction volume, the bank invested heavily in information technology and is generally credited, together with General Electric and SRI International, with inventing modern centralized bank operations, along with a number of financial transaction processing technologies such as automatic check processing, account numbers Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) and, based on these technologies, credit cards linked directly to individual bank accounts. Because of the efficiency of these technologies, the bank had significantly lower administrative costs than other banks and was able to expand until it was the world's largest bank in the early 1970s. In 1959, it invented the bank credit card, the BankAmericard, which changed its name to VISA (credit card) in 1975. A consortium of other California banks came up with Master Charge (now MasterCard) in order to compete with BankAmericard. ====Expansion Outside of California==== Following passage of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1967, BankAmerica Corp. was established for the purpose of owning BankAmerica and its subsidiaries. BankAmerica expanded outside California in 1983 with its acquisition of Seafirst Corp. of Seattle, Washington and its wholly owned banking subsidiary, Seattle-First National Bank. Seafirst was at risk of seizure by the federal government after becoming insolvent due to a series of bad loans to the oil industry. BankAmerica continued to operate its new subsidiary as Seafirst rather than Bank of America until its merger with NationsBank. BankAmerica was dealt huge losses in 1986 and 1987 due to bad loans in the Third World, particularly in Latin America. The company fired its CEO, Sam Armacost, although Armacost blamed the problems on his predecessor, A.W. (Tom) Clausen, who was then appointed to replace Armacost. The losses resulted in a huge decline of BankAmerica stock, making it vulnerable to a hostile takeover. First Interstate Bancorp of Los Angeles (which had originated from banks once owned by BofA), launched such a bid in the fall of 1986, although BankAmerica rebuffed it, mostly by selling its FinanceAmerica subsidiary to Chrysler and by selling the brokerage firm Charles Schwab and Co. back to Mr. Schwab. On the day of the stock market crash in 1987, BankAmerica was trading at $8 per share, although by 1992 it had rebounded mightily to become one of the biggest gainers of that half-decade. BankAmerica's next big acquisition came in 1992. BankAmerica acquired its California rival, Security Pacific Corp. and its subsidiary Security Pacific National Bank in California and other banks in Arizona, Idaho, Oregon and Washington (which Security Pacific had acquired in a series of acquisitions in the late 1980s). This was, at the time, the biggest bank deal in history. Federal regulators nevertheless forced the sale of Security Pacific's Washington subsidiary, Rainier Bank, because the combination of Seafirst and Rainier would have given BankAmerica too large a share of the market in that state. Later that year, BankAmerica expanded into Nevada by acquiring Valley Bank of Nevada. In 1994, BankAmerica acquired the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Co. of Chicago, which had become federally-owned as part of the same oil industry debacle that had brought down Seafirst. At the time, no bank had the resources to bail out Continental, so the federal government operated the bank for nearly a decade. Illinois at that time outlawed branch banking, so Bank of America Illinois was a single-unit bank until the 21st century. Bank of America moved its national lending department to Chicago in an effort to establish a beachhead there. Even after these later mergers, the Midwest remains the part of the country without other Bank of America branches. These mergers helped BankAmerica Corp. once again become the largest U.S. bank holding company in terms of deposits, but the company fell to second place in 1997 behind fast-growing NationsBank Corp. and to third in 1998, also behind North Carolina's First Union Corp. ==Bank of America Today== The purchase of BankAmerica Corp. by NationsBank Corp. was the largest bank deal in history at that time. While the deal was technically a purchase of Bank of America by Nationsbank, the deal was structured as a merger. Despite the mammoth size of the two companies, federal regulators insisted only upon the divestiture of 13 branches in New Mexico, in towns that would be left with only a single bank following the combination. This is because branch divestures are only required if the combined company will have a larger than 25 percent FDIC deposit market share in a particular state or 10 percent deposit market share overall. Following the $64.8 billion ($64,800,000,000) acquisition of BankAmerica by NationsBank, Bank of America had combined assets of $570 billion, and 4,800 branches in 22 U.S. state. In 2001, Bank of America CEO and chairman Hugh McColl stepped down and named Ken Lewis as his successor. Lewis's greater focus on financial discipline and efficiency contrasted greatly with the expansionary mergers and acquisition strategy of his predecessor. In 2004, Bank of America Corp. acquired Boston, Massachusetts-based FleetBoston for $47 billion to solidify Bank of America's position as the bank with the largest FDIC rated deposit market share in the United States with $513 billion in deposits well ahead of the number 2 bank holding company, newly-merged J.P. Morgan Chase-Bank One with $353 billion in deposits and number 3 Wells Fargo & Co. with $228 billion. (Deposits as of June 30, 2003.) The combined Bank of America and Fleet have 5,700 branches serving 35 million customers in 29 states. After the merger with FleetBoston Financial, roughly 1 out of every 10 dollars on deposit in a commercial bank and savings and loan were deposits of Bank of America. Although Bank of America Corp. is much larger than its nearest rivals in terms of deposit share, other financial services companies are larger on the basis of assets, profits, market capitalisation. Bank of America is currently constructing a massive new headquarters for its New York City operations. The skyscaper will be located on 42nd Street and Avenue of the Americas, and will feature state-of-the-art "green" (environmentally friendly) technology throughout its 2.1 million square feet (200,000 m²) of office space. ==Diversity== Bank of America was named one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers in 2004 by Working Mothers magazine. ==Footnotes== *1 See Above *2 See Above *3 BankAmerica, Los Angeles, was created in 1923 following a series of Los Angeles financial institution mergers and acquisitions beginning in 1910. The mergers and acquisitions were conducted by Orra E. Monnette and his father Mervin J. Monnette. Following the merger of the Bank of Italy (San Francisco) with Bank of America, Los Angeles, Orra E. Monnette was named co-chair of resulting Bank of America corporation, a seat that he held until his death in Los Angeles in 1936. Orra Monnette also served as the chairman of the Los Angeles Public Library from the mid 1920�s until his death. (Sources: Los Angeles Public Library; Los Angeles Times Obituary February 24, 1936). ==References== * Bonadio, Felice A. ''A.P. Giannini: Banker of America.'' Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1994. * Hector, Gary. ''Breaking the Bank: The Decline of BankAmerica.'' Boston: Little, Brown, 1988. * James, Marquie and Bessie. ''Biography of a Bank: The Story of Bank of America N.T.&S.A.'' New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954. * Johnston, Moira. ''Roller Coaster: The Bank of America and the Future of American Banking.'' New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1990. * Lampert, Hope. ''Behind Closed Doors: Wheeling and Dealing in the Banking World.'' New York: Atheneum, 1986. * Monnette, Orra Eugene. Personal Papers Collection. Los Angeles Public Library (Main), Los Angeles California. * Nash, Gerald G. ''A.P. Giannini and the Bank of America.'' Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. * Yockey, Ross. ''McColl: The Man with America's Money.'' Atlanta: Longstreet Press, 1999. ==External links== * [http://www.bankofamerica.com Bank of America] homepage * For more information about bank market share, see [http://www2.fdic.gov/sod/index.asp the FDIC's web site], which includes historical data ==See also== *Bank of America Corporate Center (Charlotte HQ) *Bank of America Center (Houston) (Houston) *Bank of America Center (San Francisco) (San Francisco) *Bank of America Plaza (Atlanta) (Atlanta) *Bank of America Plaza (Dallas) (Dallas) *Bank of America Tower *Bank of America Tower, New York City *Bank of America Canada ===Data=== *[http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/58/58444.html Yahoo! - Bank of America Corporation Company Profile] Bank of America Companies_based_in_North_Carolina Corporations_with_naming_rights_of_stadiums Fortune 500 companies

Bank of America

Does the section of NationsBank seem out of place at the beginning of this article? If the article is about Bank of America, why is there a lesson on the history of NationsBank at the beginning of this entry. stude62 02:54, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC) ---- Because corporations take over each other all the time and adopt the target's name. The modern Bank of America is really Nationsbank. ---- Yes, corporations do take over each other and corporations merge. The name they settle on is the one with the greatest market potential, not the name of the target. *In this case Bank of America name had greater capital value than Nationsbank. *In the case of the merger between Key Bank Corp. (New York) and Society National Bank (Ohio) the resulting financial institution is Key Corp based in Cleveland. *In the case of the Bank One/Chase Bank merger, Chase is the surviving name because it has greater recognition; Jamie Dimond, Bank One's CEO, will run the combined companies. In any event, I still feel that Nationsbank deserves its own listing as does Bank of America. One last thing, please sign your posts to the talk page by placing ~~~~ at the end of your entry - this helps everyone on Wikipedia.--user: stude62 user talk:stude62 14:16, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC) ---- Well I am an anonymous user so its pure variable ip. Anyway, I feel that the standard for wikipedia is that the article about any corporation talks about the corporate entity which is the the one that did the taking over. The one which is shown on the stock history viewable presently, which is the one labeled as such by the SEC. So in this case, this article should be about the modern bank of america, the predecessor nationsbank, with a seperate article about the old bankamerica. Or it can be simply about the company after the merger, and we can have seperate articles about the merging companies. But it shouldn't be about the company after the merger AND the about the old bankamerica with a seperate article on nationsbank User:67.180.61.179 03:13, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC) == Buildings == It'd be great if some info was added about the various buildings carrying the BoA name. There is a list at the bottom of the article, but a short summary would be nice, similar to the section in the HSBC article. I'll keep this in mind. User:Newkai 07:06, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Bank of America

Banks of the United States Fortune 500 companies Companies traded on NYSE Companies based in North Carolina Corporations with naming rights of indoor arenas Corporations with naming rights of stadiums

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