Bank of America Corporation
Explore Bank of America
Core profile pages, annual revenue records, and related research hubs for this company.
Bank of America Corporation
Explore Bank of America
Core profile pages, annual revenue records, and related research hubs for this company.
Company History
Founded 1904 in Charlotte, North Carolina
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
Bank of America’s roots begin with A.P. Giannini’s Bank of Italy in 1904, later becoming Bank of America.
Building nationwide consumer banking—and later absorbing Merrill Lynch in the crisis—created today’s universal-bank shape.
He emphasized serving ordinary depositors and branch expansion, a contrast to elite private banking norms of his era.
This Bank of America history page covers founding, expansion, crisis deals, and modern consumer-digital strategy.
Bank of America's history explains how its current scale, brand, distribution, and risk profile developed.