Bank of America Corporation

Bank of America Corporation is an American multinational bank headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, tracing its roots to the Bank of Italy, founded in San Francisco in 1904 by Amadeo Giannini to serve immigrant communities that larger banks had been reluctant to serve, and later renamed Bank of America. It grew into one of the largest banks in the United States through decades of expansion, most notably the 1998 merger with NationsBank that moved its headquarters to Charlotte, and the 2008 acquisitions of the troubled mortgage lender Countrywide Financial and the investment bank Merrill Lynch during the financial crisis.