A FINANCIAL HISTORY OF BANK OF AMERICA

Amadeo Giannini founded the Bank of Italy in San Francisco in 1904. Two years later he saved the bank's cash, gold, and notes before it was destroyed by fire after the 1906 earthquake. In 1921, Giannini circumvented a federal ruling prohibiting branch banking by acquiring the Bank of America of Los Angeles, which had 21 branches. In 1928, Giannini formed a holding company, Transamerica Corporation, to manage his banks and other businesses. By 1930, Bank of Italy and Bank of America were operating as Bank of America (BofA). During the 1930s, Giannini was troubled by regulatory investigations, and in 1937, Transamerica was forced to divest 58 percent of Bank of America (Healy, 1995). By the end of 1945, Bank of America had passed Chase Manhattan to become the largest American bank, but by 1953, action by the Securities and Exchange Commission resulted in Transamerica's divestiture of all Bank of America stock.

During the 1950s BofA decentralized; the company encouraged local managers to make decisions based on local conditions. This was the beginning of the bank's successful transformation into a community-based branch operation that resulted in the company achieving the impressive financial results it has posted. However, BofA also expanded internationally; by 1970 it was one of the largest international lenders based in the United States. It was also an early pioneer in consumer credit, intro

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n 1990, Clausen retired, and president Richard Rosenberg, a 22-year Wells Fargo veteran, became chief executive officer. The company began 1990 with banking operations in three states and ended the year with operations in seven states because of eight acquisitions. In 1992, BankAmerica acquired Security Pacific Bank in the largest domestic banking merger to that time; the acquisition sparked a new round of cost-cutting ("Bank of America," 2002). The modern Bank of America was formed when Bank of America merged with NationsBank in 1998. The deal was technically an acquisition of Bank of America by NationsBank, but the size of both entities and the fact that the merged entity retained the Bank of America name emphasized the merged nature of the transaction. NationsBank itself was the product of many mergers and acquisitions, and traced its history to 1874 when a group of citizens in Charlotte, North Carolina formed Commercial National Bank. Today, Bank of America has its headquarters in Charlotte. NationsBank's more recent history can be traced to 1960 with the merger of American Commercial Bank and Security National in a transaction that resulted in the North Carolina National Bank with assets of $480 million. Nine banks we
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Approximate Word count = 1250
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)