Bank of America

The Bank of America Corporation is a multinational financial services and banking corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It is ranked the second of the largest bank holding company in the U.S. by assets. Bank of America Corporation (Bank of America), incorporated on July 31, 1998, is a financial institution to serve small and middle market businesses, individual consumers, corporations and Governments with a provision of banking, asset management, investing, and other financial and risk management products and services. Through its banking and various subsidiary businesses throughout the United States and in international markets, the Company provides a range of banking and nonbanking services and products within five business segments: Consumer & Business Banking, Consumer Real Estate Services, Global Markets, Global Banking and Global Wealth & Investment Management.

Bank of America is named as one of the Big Four banks in the United States, together with Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo—its main competitors. Its operation covers all 50 states of the U.S., including the District of Columbia and over 40 other countries.

History

Bank of Italy

The history of Bank of America dates back to 1904, when Amadeo Giannini was the founder of the Bank of Italy in San Francisco. In 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Giannini saved all deposits out of the bank building and after a few days of the disaster, lent the funds to the Italian immigrants in need to rebuild their homes. The business was unambitiously started from a makeshift desk made of a few planks over two barrels.

Following steady growth of business since 192 2,in 1928, A.P. Giannini’s Bank of Italy was merging with Bank of America, Los Angeles. With all of his other bank holdings, he created what became the largest banking institution in the country. He changed the name of the Bank of Italy on November 3, 1930, and called it Bank of America since then.

Acquisition of Merrill Lynch

The development of Bank of America is marked by successive move of acquisition of renowned banks, firms, financial institutions for the accumulation of its strength. Among all the feats, the acquisition of Merrill Lynch in 2008 made Bank of America the world's largest wealth management entity and a significant player in the investment banking market. The process is not without drama.

On September 14, 2008, Bank of America expressed its intention to purchase Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. in an all-stock deal worth approximately $50 billion. This acquisition, if made success, would place Bank of America as the largest financial services company in the world. The deal obtained the shareholder approval from both sides on December 5, 2008, and was finalized January 1, 2009. With the impact of financial crisis, in the January 2009 earnings release, the bank revealed enormous losses at Merrill Lynch in the 4Q, which impelled the an infusion of money from government that had previously been negotiated as one of the conditions complied for the government-involved deal for the bank to acquire Merrill. Merrill reported an operating loss of $21.5 billion in the same quarter, primarily in its trading and sales operations. Under the pressure from the circumstance, the bank even disclosed its abandoning intention for the deal in December after the extent of Merrill's trading losses aggravated, but the government interference impeded the breach of the merger.

The acquisition precariously made Bank of America the first underwriter of global high yield debt, the ninth largest adviser on global mergers and acquisitions, and the third largest underwriter of global equity. With the ease of credit crisis eased, losses from Merrill Lynch was alleviated, then the subsidiary gradually generated $3.7 billion of Bank of America's $4.2 billion in profit by the end of 1Q in 2009, and more than 25% in 3Q 2009.

Operations

Bank of America has 90% of its revenues generated in the national market and continues to purchase businesses in the U.S. The key of Bank of America's business tactic is to be the top bank in its domestic locality, which is a goal It has partly achieved through continuous acquisitions.

Consumer

Consumer Banking is the major sector in the company, and offers financial services to small businesses and consumers. The acquisition of FleetBoston and MBNA substantially expanded the scale and range of the consumer banking services, contributing about half of the company's total revenue. In the current market place, the company is competing primarily with the retail banking branches of America's three other megabanks: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo. The Consumer Banking organization is now including more than 18,000 ATMs and over 5,800 retail branches across the United States.

Bank of America is a member of the Global ATM Alliance, a corporate entity of many other major international banks. By the end of 2013, the Alliance allowed customers of the member banks to use their check card or ATM card for the product or service in another bank within the Alliance with no access fees occurred when the transaction is happening internationally. Considering mutual interest and corporate development, the policy recently changes to 3% of funds from the customer withdraw from any of the ATM overseas. The participating banks in the Alliance are BNP Paribas (France), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Scotiabank (Canada), Ukrsibbank (Ukraine), Barclays (United Kingdom), China Construction Bank (China), Santander Serfin (Mexico), and Westpac (Australia and New Zealand). So far, this feature is still restrictively applied to debit card withdrawal and foreign currency conversion fees will not be exempted. However, credit card withdrawals will still incur cash advance fees and foreign currency conversion fees. In addition, some foreign ATMs with Smart Card technology cannot accept non-Smart Cards.

Within the consumer products and services category, Bank of America offers banking and brokerage products as well thanks to the acquisition of Merrill Lynch. Savings programs such as "Keep the Change" and "Add it Up" have gained market popularity and are a reflection of the revival of Bank’s product development since 2008 recession.

Bank of America, N.A is a national chartered bank, within the control of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Department of the Treasury. In 1958, the bank launched the BankAmericard, which is the predecessor of Visa in 1975.

Corporate

Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch won for the company robust threshold entering the investment banking business. Before the acquisition, the part of Global Corporate and Investment Banking (GCIB) business was operated as Bank of America Securities LLC. With the wielding of the name and expertise from Merrill Lynch, Bank of America’s investment banking activities extended and provided services ranging from capital markets, mergers and acquisitions advisory, sales & trading in fixed income and equities markets, as well as underwriting. Its strongest groups include Syndicated Loans, Leveraged Finance, and mortgage-backed securities. It also owns one of the largest research teams on Wall Street. The corporate of Bank of America Merrill Lynch is headquartered in New York City.

Investment management

Global Wealth and Investment Management supervises and manages assets of individuals and institutions. It tops among the 10 most influential U.S. wealth managers, ranked by private banking assets under the investment management with accounts of $1 million or more. Global Wealth and Investment Management has five major lines of business: The Private Bank, Premier Banking & Investments aligned with Bank of America Investment Services, Inc., Family Wealth Advisors, and Bank of America Specialist.

Bank of America has invested $675 million forming its U.S. investment banking business and is ambitiously striving to be one of the top five investment banks globally. The company already has cultivated excellent relationships with financial institutions and the corporate worldwide. Its customers cover 98% of the Fortune 500 titles in the U.S. and 79% of the Global Fortune 500. These endeavor and achievements, as well as a balance sheet that strongly speaks the solidity, are the foundations for a unshakeable business standing. In April, 2012, The New York Times named the Bank of America as one of the members of the American Legislative Exchange Council.

International operations

Bank of America initiated its Asian foray into mainland China market, acquiring 9% stake for $3 billion in China Construction Bank, one of the biggest four banks in China. In November 2011, Bank of America announced its upcoming action to divest majority of its stake in the China Construction Bank. It is a watershed moment of the company's first and largest charge into China's growing financial market. Bank has now official Asian office in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou and is preparing for grandeur expansion into its Chinese business following this deal. In 2008, Bank of America has won the Project Finance Deal of the Year at the ALB Hong Kong Law Awards.

In the neighborhood of U.S., Bank of America is also claiming its territory. The bank is operating under the name BankBoston in several largest Latin American countries, including Brazil. In Brazil, Bank of America exchanged BankBoston's operations for Itaú shares from Brazilian bank Banco Itaú. Though the operation was exchanged sound and smooth, the BankBoston name and trademarks were not automatically included with the transaction, as stipulated in the sale agreement, Bank of America has no ownership for the name and trademarks, in considering the integrity of the BankBoston brand.

Nowadays, Bank of America's Global Corporate and Investment Banking occupies all the continents with divisions in domestic, Asia and Europe. The U.S. headquarters are planned in New York, European division is headquartered in London, and Asian headquarters are based in Hong Kong.

Individualistic Corporate Spirit

Teamwork

As an integral unity, Bank of America firmly believes in the importance of teamwork and demonstrates that their prioritized goals within the corporate development are to build the team, strengthen the team, make best of the power of the people, take charge and foster opportunity. This spirit of teamwork is tightly associated with job autonomy and the sense of social commitment and belonging. Bank of America is also promoting an open and constant dialogue between employees and senior management. Senior management is always ready and available for direct email response to employees and a Speak Up!, an internal information exchange platform, where comments, opinions can be conveyed and gathered, has been built. The company’s teamwork effort is based on the study that the production levels will be greatly enhanced when people can feel the cohesion within a team. The study also says, with workers more and more involved in working together and becoming a cohesive unity, they will more likely to perceive their colleagues as friends.

Due to job autonomy , team focus, diversity and inclusion, there is gradually a lot of intensified commitment work practices within the Bank of America employees. The organization structure provides a prospect of career path in the company, such as the CEO leads the team with officers work below him. Incentives are also strategically utilized to ensure people the recognition for contribution and the consequent benefit and approval so as to stabilized them with the progress of Bank of America in a long run. These practices have successfully boosted loyalty, creativity and commitment from the employees to the company.

Employee Benefit

The vision of Bank of America emphasizes its employee benefit. The company is realizing the most important asset within a company, within any business practice, is the employee. In light of this, employee well-being and benefits monetarily and spiritually are the center of company’s mission. Accommodating diversity and inclusion, training development and recognition employee achievement, etc., are all in practice aligning with company’s all the business activity.. For example, Bank of America is typically promoting reward system by sending personalized e-cards to individuals or teams when their efforts and commitment are acknowledged for success. The company also grants “recognition awards” to the employees which can be an exchanged for merchandise, any commodity or gift cards, or award-winning employees will have choice to receive “appreciation points” for future redemption.

Bank of America provides continued training program for employee’s advanced growth. It has an employee-tailored curriculum from where employees can choose to take various courses with refunded tuition. This consideration allows employees to expand and sharpen their skills in current positions and also provides the opportunity to venture into other jobs, given that the company highly encourages internal position exchange.