Bank of America is the financial conglomerate that provides a wide range of financial services to individuals and companies, the largest one of bank holding companies in the U.S. in the number of assets, takes place among the three largest companies in the world according to Forbes. There are about 6000 Bank of America locations in the U.S. and 300 in other countries, 288 000 employees and 16,500 ATMs.

In September 14, 2008 Bank of America announced the purchase of investment bank Merrill Lynch. The cost of purchase according to the newspaper The Wall Street Journal was $ 50 billion.

In August 29, 2011 Bank of America announced plans to sell 13 billion China Construction Bank (NE) shares to the group of private investors. The transaction value amounts 8.3 billion dollars.

In 1904, the son of Italian immigrants Amedeo Giannini founded in San Francisco a new bank called the Bank of Italy, designed to work among the many Italian immigrants. Bank of Italy showed more activity on restoration of San Francisco after the disastrous earthquake of 1906. Giannini used a number of innovations in the banking sector, in particular, it is one of the first laid emphasis on the maintenance of "middle class" and opened a large number of bank, which by 1927 numbered more than 100. In 1929 he carried out the merger of their bank with Bank of America based in Los Angeles. United Bank took the name of the latter.

By this time, Bank of America became the largest bank in the United States. Operations of Giannini went far beyond California through which he founded in 1928 Transamerica Corporation, which owned a key stake in Bank of America itself.

After retirement in 1945 Amadeo Giannini's business was continued by his son Lawrence Jeannine, who became the president of the bank in 1936. With his death, which coincided with the victory in the presidential elections in the U.S., Republican Party to the Bank of America fell on hard times.

With the adoption of a new anti-trust legislation (the Clayton Act and the Act on bank holding companies) Bank of America and Transamerica Corporation were divided in 1953. In 1957 from the Transamerica Corporation, the company stand out First Interstate Bancorp., Absorbed in 1996 by Wells Fargo. Transamerica Corporation, which has won only insurance business, was bought in 1999 by the Netherlands Aegon. Bank of America itself has restricted its operations outside of California.

Since 1958, Bank of America began to issue credit cards out of which grew the modern VISA cards. In response, a group of banks grouped around Wells Fargo, released MasterCard in 1966.

In 1983, Bank of America has once again gone beyond California, acquired Seafirst Bank in Seattle. But in 1986-1987 it suffered heavy losses and difficult to beat off an attack of its own "offspring" - First Interstate Bancorp, Bank of America's attempts to conquer. In the 1990s, acquiring a number of banks (including California's Security Pacific Bank, Chicago Continental Illinois) Bank of America locations again became the biggest ones the United States, but in 1997 gave .4 billion to New York-based DE Shaw & Co. and this has led to disaster. Money was lost as a result of the economic crisis in Russia in 1998, and it Bank of America was bought by NationsBank.

NationsBank, was founded in 1874 in Charlotte, North Carolina under the name of the Commercial National Bank, in 1957 teamed up with his long rival American Trust Co. under the name of American Commercial Bank, which in 1960 following the merger with Security National Bank was called the Carolina National Bank.

Finally, in 2008 during the global economic crisis, Bank of America locations were bought by Merrill Lynch. Latter it caused a sharp attack on the Bank of America due to the disastrous state of purchase and the fact that it was purchased with funds allocated by the Government to combat the financial crisis. As a result, Ken Louis was forced in April 29, 2009 to transfer the post of chairman to Walter Massey and by the end of the year he was retired. While serving as CEO of Bank of America on January 1, 2010 he was replaced with Brian Moynihan, who joined Bank of America, along with FlitBoston Bank.

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