The Bank of America Corporation (often abbreviated as BofA or BoA) is an American global investment bank and financial services holding company with headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. The bank was created in San Francisco and bought by NationsBank of Charlotte in 1998 when it took on its current form. After JPMorgan Chase, it is the second-largest bank in the United States and the eighth-largest bank in the world. The banco de America is one of the United States’ Big Four banking institutions. It competes with JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo for around 10.73 percent of all American bank deposits. Commercial banking, wealth management, and investment banking are the company’s major financial services.
Banking Options
A branch of its history may be traced back to Amadeo Pietro Giannini’s 1904 founding of Bank of Italy, which offered a variety of banking options to Italian immigrants who encountered service discrimination.
Giannini bought Banca d’America e d’Italia (Bank of America and Italy) in 1922, which was based in San Francisco, California. In the 1950s, the enactment of major federal banking laws aided rapid growth, allowing the company to swiftly build a significant market share.
BankAmerica, as it was then known, was acquired by Charlotte-based NationsBank for US$62 billion after sustaining a large loss during the 1998 Russian bond failure. The Bank of America Corporation was created following the largest bank purchase in history at the time. It expanded its commercial banking business through a series of mergers and acquisitions, forming Merrill Lynch for wealth management and Bank of America Merrill Lynch for investment banking in 2008 and 2009, respectively (since renamed BofA Securities).
Business Relationships
In their respective services, both Bank of America and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management maintains strong market shares. As of 2018, the investment bank is ranked third in the “Bulge Bracket” as the world’s third-largest investment bank. Its wealth management division is the world’s second-largest wealth manager, after UBS, with US$1.081 trillion in assets under management (AUM). Bank of America has commercial banking operations in all 50 states of the United States, the District of Columbia, and more than 40 other countries, but does not necessarily maintain retail offices. Its commercial banking network includes 46 million consumer and small business ties spread across 4,600 locations.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, the bank’s substantial market share, commercial activity, and economic impact have resulted in several lawsuits and investigations involving both mortgages and financial disclosures. Since the early twentieth century, its corporate policies of supporting the middle class and wider banking community have resulted in a significant market share. Bank of America is the world’s 13th largest firm, with a market capitalization of $313.5 billion as of August 2018. As of June 2018, it was the sixth-largest American public corporation, with sales of $102.98 billion. On the 2020 Fortune 500 list of the largest US corporations by revenue, Bank of America was ranked #25.
Similarly, Bank of America was ranked #8 in Forbes’ Global 2000 rankings for 2020. The Euromoney Institutional Investor recognized banco de America as the “World’s Best Bank” in their 2018 Awards for Excellence.