Bank Of America History

I. Brief company history – about one page. Bank of America, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, is an American multinational banking and financial services corporation (Statista). In 1904, the bank was founded as Bank of Italy on October 17 by Mr. Amadeo Pietro Giannini in San Francisco (Anderson, 2011). During this time the majority of local banks only focused on providing services to wealthy Americans (Anderson, 2011), refusing to serve immigrants, middle-class Americans and farmers (ONeil, 2016). Seeing an opportunity Mr. Giannini decided to establish a bank to serve those people, especially Italian Americans immigrants (Anderson, 2011). Word spread of the bank and Mr. Giannini began to grow his business (Anderson, 2011). In 1922, Mr. Giannini bought an Italian bank and established

In 1928, Giannini merged Bank of America and Italy with Bank of America, Los Angeles (Anderson, 2011). To fulfill the simplification plan of the bank at that time, in 1930, Bank of America of California merged with Bank of Italy National Trust & Savings Association into a new Bank of America National Trust & Savings Association. (Swaine, 2006) Overtime Giannini continued to consolidate with several other banks and established one of the largest banking institutions in the country, known as Bank America Corporation, in 1968 (Anderson, 2011). The corporation’s main responsibilities were to hold the assets of Bank of America N.T. & S.A. and to help the bank expand and better challenge its arch-rival, Citibank (International Directory of Company Histories, 1994). In the early 1980s, every loan of the bank went bad and the bank began to fall apart (International Directory of Company Histories, 1994). It was not until 1990s that the bank began to recover (International Directory of Company Histories, 1994). In 1998, Nations Bank made an acquisition deal with Bank America Corporation and the combined entity got the name of