Bank of America Corp.

ABOUT THIS COMPANY:

Beyond America

Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Bank of America is one of the world’s largest financial institutions, with customers in more than 150 countries and business relationships with more than 80 percent of the Global Fortune 500. The bank's roots go back to the late 18th century when Massachusetts Bank was chartered in 1784 and the Providence Bank was created in Rhode Island in 1791. Two centuries later, in the 1960s, a southern bank known as North Carolina National Bank had began an aggressive plan of expansion based on the model of a “hometown bank” where a branch would individually cater to the needs of the community it served. NCNB’s model proved popular, and it expanded through the 1970s and 1980s. In 1991, NCNB merged with Citizens & Southern National Bank to form NationsBank, which acquired BankAmerica in 1998 to become Bank of America. In 2004, BofA acquired FleetBoston Financial for $47 billion, and in 2006, it paid $35 billion for MBNA's credit card business. In 2007, the bank acquired U.S. Trust as well as the ABN Amro North American Holding Company, the parent of U.S.-based LaSalle Bank Corporation. In 2008, BofA America purchased the U.S. diversified financial services holding group Countrywide Financial Corporation and, at the end of the year, made just about every headline in the world, announcing that it would buy New York-based investment bank Merrill Lynch, calling the purchase “a great opportunity for our shareholders,” as the deal expected to achieve $7 billion in pretax expense savings by 2012. When the deal closed, it made BofA the biggest U.S. bank in terms of assets, with more than $2 trillion; the largest brokerage firm in the world; one of the leading investment banking advisory firms; and one of the world’s top wealth management firms. More recently, BofA has been in headlines for less-than-stellar reasons: in the third quarter 2011, it announced that, to cut costs, it would be shedding 40,000 jobs over the next few years. Today, the firm employs more than 287,000 people and is led by CEO Brian Moynihan.