For now though, the problems at BofA are bigger than just Merrill and Countrywide.
And, as Hempton indicates, one of the biggest risks at BofA was that market confidence in the bank might die, making financing impossible.
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The sale continues a reversal of policy at BofA, which spent years transforming itself into a global behemoth through acquisitions, right through the crisis.
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Shares are up 27% this year compared to 5% at BofA and UBS. Wells is up just 3% this year while Goldman Sachs is up 24%.
Krawcheck was let go last month 6 amid a major management restructuring at BofA. Joseph Price, president of consumer and small business banking, was also given the boot.
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"There are a lot of nuances you may be missing by focusing only on style and size, " says Savita Subramanian, head of equity and quantitative strategy at BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research.
Hoyos got his boot in the door at BofA in March 2007, when reps from adt, the security company now part of Tyco International, spotted Hoyos' exhibit at a conference in Las Vegas. adt later enticed representatives from its clients, including Goldman Sachs, American Express and BofA, to Global's workshop in New York.
At a BofA branch, staffers are schooled to call you by name several times.
The unit, with just over 7, 000 financial advisors, is much smaller than its rivals at MSSB and BofA Merrill Lynch who each claim over 17, 000 FAs.
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Back then it was CEO Ken Lewis at the helm of BofA and who formed both the Countrywide and Merrill deals.
However, both Citi and BofA trade at dramatically less than book value.
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At Goldman Sachs, BofA and Citigroup, revenues from fixed income, currency and commodity trading, the main contributors to investment-banking profits over the past decade, were up to a third lower than a year ago.
Unlike most of its competitors the likes of JP Morgan ( JPM), Citigroup ( C), USB ( USB) and Wells Fargo ( WFC) BofA trades at a significant discount to its tangible book value.
Bank of America ( BAC - news - people ) aims its bank- card pitch at employers who buy them in bulk as staff gifts. (BofA declined to comment on whether employers receive a discount rate for buying scads of cards at a time.) There's no dormancy fee with BofA's product, but after nine months the cards become worthless, whatever the remaining balance is.
We can see that enough investors believe in BofA to pay at least 7 bucks a share for a piece of it, but few of those actual buyers are major investors.
While he was there, he had a few drinks at a nightclub and charged them to his BofA debit card.
At the height of the 1980s banking crisis, BofA was calmly lending money to other troubled banks including Continental, which quickly failed because it had no such branch network and was able to work its problems out over time.
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Last week roughly 15 Lehman debt holders including BofA, Goldman and Barclays filed court documents firing back at Paulson.
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Finance, BofA will also post a series of educational videos aimed at familiarizing consumers with Merrill Edge on popular social networking sites.
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"I've been suspicious of the BofA acquisition drive, " says Wendell Perkins, chief investment officer at Johnson Asset Management, which owns the stock.
The row over the early payment of bonuses at Merrill Lynch shows yet again that insiders' interests come first (those to BofA staff, however, are likely to shrivel).
While his counterparts at Citi and Chase struggle to bring order to the dissonant pieces of their empires, BofA lifer Lewis, 60, has learned, through years of integrating new acquisitions, how to make operations run smoothly.
While BofA still has plenty of issues, many see the settlement as a long-term positive at the very least.
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