Bank of America

The bank’s history dates to 1904 when Amadeo Peter Giannini opened the Bank of Italy in San Francisco. It eventually developed into the Bank of America and was for a time owned by Giannini’s holding company, Transamerica Corporation. It issued the first bank credit card, BankAmeriCard, in 1958. (The first universal credit card, which could be used at a variety of establishments, had been introduced by the Diners’ Club, Inc., in 1950.)

In 1968 the newly named BankAmerica Corporation was organized in Delaware as a holding company for Bank of America NT & SA and other financial subsidiaries. One of BankAmerica’s most significant acquisitions was the 1983 purchase of Washington state bank Seafirst Corporation, which was the biggest U.S. interstate bank merger to date. After purchasing its major competitor in California, Security Pacific Corporation, in 1991, Bank of America became the first bank to offer coast-to-coast operations in the United States. It expanded into New England with the acquisition of FleetBoston Financial Corporation in 2004, and by the early 21st century it was operating more than 5,500 bank branches in more than 20 U.S. states and conducting corporate and investment banking in numerous countries worldwide. The firm enlarged its credit-card business by acquiring National Processing, a transaction-processing firm, in 2004, and its merger with MBNA Corporation in 2006 made Bank of America a leading issuer of credit cards. To gain a strong position in the wealth-management business, Bank of America in 2007 acquired U.S. Trust Corporation, an investment firm that manages investments for high-net-worth individuals.

As the global financial crisis emerged in 2008, numerous institutions began to struggle, notably Countrywide Financial, the largest American mortgage lender, and Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. That year Bank of America bought both companies, and the acquisitions proved costly. In January 2009 Bank of America announced that it would receive $20 billion in U.S. government aid and an additional $118 billion in guarantees against bad assets incurred as a result of the acquisition of Merrill Lynch. Bank of America subsequently faced a number of state and federal lawsuits regarding claims that it had defrauded investors. In 2012 it agreed to pay $2.43 billion to settle a class-action suit involving allegations that the company had failed to disclose to investors the true financial health of Merrill Lynch. Also coming under scrutiny were the mortgage operations of both Bank of America and Countrywide. In particular, they were accused of having made risky mortgage loans and then misrepresented the quality of those loans to investors. In 2013 the U.S. government sued Bank of America for financial fraud, and the following year the company agreed to pay $16.65 billion.