Bank of America Corporation
Banking and financial servicesFounded 1904- Updated June 2026
Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya
Last reviewed: June 2026
CorpDigest
Bank of America Corporation
Company History
Founded 1904 in Charlotte, North Carolina
Last reviewed: 2026-06-03 · By Swet Parvadiya
San Francisco, 1904. Amadeo Pietro Giannini opened the Bank of Italy on Columbus Avenue in the North Beach neighborhood, serving the Italian immigrant community that the established banks on Montgomery Street largely ignored. Giannini's thesis was simple and radical: banks should serve ordinary working people, not just the wealthy. He offered small loans without collateral requirements that other banks demanded, opened branches in neighborhoods, and installed tellers who could communicate with immigrant communities in their own languages.
The 1906 earthquake destroyed much of the city but not Giannini's business. He retrieved $80,000 in gold coin from his vault before the fires spread, transported it by vegetable wagon to his home in San Mateo, and opened for business in the rubble while other banks waited for their buildings to be rebuilt. The loans he made in those weeks established a loyalty that outlasted the rebuilding by generations.
Giannini pioneered branch banking in California — a concept that was legally and culturally controversial — by arguing that a bank with multiple locations could serve customers where they lived rather than requiring them to travel to a single downtown office. The California legislature eventually passed laws restricting branch banking in response to pressure from unit bankers who feared competition, but Giannini had already established the model.
The 1930 renaming from Bank of Italy to Bank of America reflected the expansion beyond the Italian immigrant community into the broader American market. By the 1950s, the bank had invented BankAmericard — the precursor to Visa — and was the largest bank in the world by deposits. The 1998 merger with NationsBank of Charlotte was the transaction that created the modern institution and established the corporate headquarters that exists today.
Giannini founded the Bank of Italy in San Francisco in 1904 to provide deposits, small loans, installment credit, and mortgage access to customers ignored by established institutions. His response after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake became part of the company's operating mythology because he resumed lending while many banks were disabled or cautious. He championed branch banking, which allowed the institution to gather deposits and serve customers across communities rather than relying on a single downtown office. By 1930, the Bank of Italy had become Bank of America, reflecting an ambition far beyond its original ethnic-community identity. Giannini's lasting influence is the idea that mass-market banking can be both socially expansive and commercially powerful. Bank of America's modern cross-sell model still rests on his core insight: ordinary customers become extraordinary assets when a bank earns their trust early.
Giannini's decision to resume lending from a plank-and-barrel desk while other banks remained closed after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake established the bank's identity as a populist institution willing to serve when others would not.
The merger with BankAmerica gave NationsBank the Bank of America name and West Coast presence, creating the first true coast-to-coast U.S. Banking franchise and setting the stage for the next decade of acquisitions.
Acquiring both Countrywide and Merrill Lynch during the financial crisis was the most consequential 12-month period in the bank's modern history. Countrywide became a cautionary tale; Merrill became the strategic foundation for fee-based diversification.
Brian Moynihan's appointment as CEO in 2010 marked the pivot from acquisition-driven growth to responsible growth, expense discipline, and relationship deepening that defines the current operating model.
The Department of Justice settlement covering mortgage-related fraud claims from Countrywide and Merrill Lynch was the largest civil settlement with a single entity in U.S. History at the time, closing the most damaging chapter of crisis-era liability.
Strengthen mortgage business
Expand investment banking and wealth management
Expand Midwest presence
Expand credit card operations
Expand regional banking presence
Create a coast-to-coast U.S. Banking franchise under the Bank of America name
Amadeo Pietro Giannini founded Bank of Italy in San Francisco in 1904 specifically to serve immigrants, farmers, and working-class customers whom established banks refused to serve, creating a banking philosophy of accessibility that shaped Bank of America's identity for a century. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Giannini famously set up a plank-and-barrel desk in the street to lend money for rebuilding when other banks were closed, demonstrating commitment to community over profit. Giannini pioneered branch banking (California's first bank with multiple locations), retail banking for ordinary people, and eventually renamed the bank Bank of America in 1930—the name reflecting his ambition that a bank should serve all Americans rather than just the wealthy elite.
Bank of America's 2008 acquisition of Countrywide Financial for $4.1 billion turned into one of the most expensive mistakes in US banking history, as Countrywide's subprime mortgage portfolio generated $40+ billion in losses and legal settlements over the subsequent decade. CEO Ken Lewis believed buying the nation's largest mortgage originator at a distressed price was a bargain, but Countrywide's fraudulent lending practices—millions of mortgages with falsified income documentation—created liabilities that dwarfed the purchase price. Bank of America ultimately paid $16.65 billion in a 2014 DOJ settlement (the largest in US history at the time), $9 billion to Fannie Mae, and billions more in investor lawsuits, making Countrywide a textbook cautionary tale about acquiring damaged assets without adequate due diligence.
Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch in January 2009 for $29.1 billion, absorbing the iconic investment bank amid the financial crisis to create a universal bank with retail banking, investment banking, and wealth management under one roof. The acquisition was rushed—announced in September 2008 the same weekend Lehman Brothers failed—and Merrill's hidden losses ($15+ billion in Q4 2008) triggered a governance crisis when CEO Ken Lewis sought to terminate the deal, forcing the Federal Reserve to threaten management changes if the deal collapsed. Despite a turbulent integration, Merrill Lynch Wealth Management became Bank of America's most consistently profitable division, managing $3.5 trillion in client assets and contributing $4-5 billion in annual operating earnings that vindicated the acquisition's long-term strategic logic.
Brian Moynihan became CEO in December 2010 inheriting a bank paying billions monthly in litigation costs from Countrywide and facing existential capital questions, with Bank of America's stock trading below $6 versus $55 pre-crisis. Moynihan implemented 'Project New BAC,' cutting 30,000 jobs, exiting 20+ non-core businesses, and reducing the balance sheet by $300 billion to simplify the bank and generate capital. He settled the major Countrywide-related litigation, clearing the $40+ billion overhang, and by 2014 Bank of America passed the Fed's stress tests, ending the survival-mode era. Moynihan's patient, systematic cleanup—taking 4-5 years to resolve crisis-era liabilities—restored Bank of America's financial strength and enabled the sustained profitability that followed.
Bank of America announced the MBNA Corporation acquisition on June 30, 2005, paying about $35 billion in cash and stock, and closed it on January 1, 2006, the largest US credit card deal ever at the time. MBNA, based in Wilmington, Delaware, had been founded as Maryland Bank N.A. in 1982 as a subsidiary of Maryland National Bank and had become a credit card monoline famous for its 5,000-plus affinity partnerships with universities, sports leagues, and professional groups that gave it preferential customer acquisition economics and disciplined underwriting through several recessions. At completion the combined company held about $143 billion in managed credit card receivables and roughly 40 million active accounts, leapfrogging Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase to become the largest US issuer by both balances and accounts. CEO Ken Lewis projected $850 million of annual cost synergies and rebranded MBNA's products as Bank of America cards through 2007. Strategically the deal closed BofA's main consumer-banking gap. The bank already had the country's largest deposit and branch network after the 2004 FleetBoston merger, but it lagged in card revenue. MBNA also handed BofA the European card business in the UK, Ireland, and Spain. The transaction's long shadow was less flattering: MBNA's affinity model dampened amid the 2008 financial crisis, charge-offs spiked above 12 percent, and the bank later wound down many international card operations, but the franchise still anchors today's card business under the BankAmericard and customized cash rewards lines.