In May it acquired, from Bank of America, BankBoston's operations in Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay.

FORBES

BankBoston operates in 24 countries, so must guard against oversights caused by local differences.

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Even BankBoston, one of the American banks with the highest customer take-up, has only around 10% online.

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As The Economist went to press, the answer appeared to be Henrique Meirelles, a former boss of BankBoston.

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Even if BankBoston does its best to be ready, no one can be sure what will happen when the clock strikes twelve.

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Meirelles was a former president of BankBoston in New York and oversaw one of the most stable monetary policies and inflationary periods in Brazilian history.

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In particular, it throws a spanner into the expansion plans of several big regional banks, including Mellon, which is based in Pittsburgh, and BankBoston and Fleet, both headquartered in Boston.

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BankBoston's computer programs must each be scanned for places where dates are coded in such a way that they could cause a problem as midnight strikes on December 31st 1999.

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