Thread: B OF A BANK OF OPORTUNITY

No GPS tells you where to turn. No beacon of light is there to guide you. That's why we look at the world in thousands of ways – for the single-minded reason of finding windows of opportunity.

From Main Street to Wall Street, we anticipate needs and develop innovative products to meet them. We see what you see – whether you're a student opening your first savings account or a CEO of a multinational corporation, and we make getting to where you want to go possible.

We also believe in developing and pursuing opportunities beyond the world of finance – opportunities to strengthen a community by turning an abandoned lot into a ball field or to preserve the health of our planet by investing in clean energy sources. Through our community outreach, philanthropic giving and environmental efforts, we find what's good and embrace it.

Creating, seizing and igniting opportunity is what it's all about.

Opportunities abound, when you know where to look.

NEW TELEVISON COMMERCIALS

http://link.toolbot.com/theplatform.com/66694

http://link.toolbot.com/theplatform.com/66695

http://link.toolbot.com/theplatform.com/66696

BofA to continue issuing controversial credit cards

By LESLIE A. PAPPAS, The News Journal

Posted Friday, February 23, 2007


Bank of America's new national TV advertising campaign will use the theme "Bank of Opportunity."


Kenneth Lewis, chairman and CEO of Bank of America

Bank of America will continue a controversial pilot program in Los Angeles that markets credit cards to customers without Social Security numbers despite a national uproar, the bank said Thursday.

"We know some will find this unacceptable," the bank's chairman and CEO, Kenneth D. Lewis, wrote in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

The program is in full compliance with U.S. laws and the Patriot Act and is intended to help customers build a credit history, Lewis said.

"First, the program is not about illegal immigrants, and it never was," said Lewis. "Second, we believe we have an obligation to serve all those in our country who are legally eligible to receive services. To do less would be discriminatory and unfair."

The program is just one of a string of new initiatives the bank has tried recently to grow its business.

"They're needing to come up with other ways to expand," says Bill Hardekopf, CEO of LowCards.com, a Web site that compares credit card rates. "Most of the recent expansion in the industry has been vertically through acquisition. Here's a way for them to grow by tapping an untapped market."

Through four years of gobbling up smaller rivals, the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank -- which employs about 10,000 people in Delaware, mostly in its credit card division -- has grown to be the nation's largest retail bank and largest credit card issuer.

But after nearing a federal cap that bars any U.S. bank from holding more than 10 percent of the nation's deposits, the company said this week it would shift strategies toward more organic growth.

"We don't need another U.S. acquisition," Lewis told Bloomberg News in an interview Tuesday.

Instead, Bank of America is trying to figure out how to tap new markets and squeeze money out of existing customers.

Some of those customers, such at Mort Kaplan, 75, of Dover, say they've paid the price for the bank's rapid growth.

Kaplan purchased dozens of long-term CDs at MBNA, but since the Wilmington-based bank merged with Bank of America, he has moved his CD money to other banks because of what he describes as terrible customer service.

"Their growth is not due to service, it is due to buying others." he said. "They didn't earn it, they bought it."

Analysts say they'll be listening closely for acquisition murmurs when executives speak at the bank's investor conference next week.

Jefferson Harralson, a bank analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, suspects Bank of America may be more ready for an acquisition than they're letting on.

After a year of unaggressively pricing CDs, the bank's deposit share has dropped to around 9.2 percent, giving the bank some wiggle room to buy a small bank, he said. The company has also been building up tangible capital, and recently declared the MBNA acquisition complete.

"If you add all three of those together, they're ready," Harralson said. Bank of America "traditionally will downplay its appetite for acquisitions, but they've been very aggressive over time."

The bank says growing from within is the natural next step after four years of rapid expansion.

In 2003, Bank of America had 24 million customers, 4,200 branches and 13,000 ATMs, said bank spokesman Joe Goode.

Today, after acquiring FleetBoston Financial in 2004 and MBNA last year, the bank serves 55 million people through 5,700 branches and 17,000 ATMs, Goode said.

Now the bank wants those customers to think beyond their basic checking or credit card accounts.

The company announced Thursday it would launch a new national advertising campaign during Sunday's Academy Awards telecast to attract customers to other bank services, such as home and business loans or retirement planning.

"Our marketing and branding strategy is about supporting and accelerating the growth prospects with our company," said Goode. "We are evolving Bank of America from a brand everyone knows to a destination brand that everyone visits and uses repeatedly." Not every trial balloon has gone over well.

Critics said the pilot program in Los Angeles offering credit cards to people without Social Security numbers targets illegal immigrants and could be a threat to national security.

One Web site (bankofamerica boycott.com) called for a boycott in response to the program, and has generated almost 12,000 signatures since it was set up a week ago.

Lewis' announcement Thursday that the program would continue didn't go over well with William Gheen, director of the National Illegal Immigration Boycott Coalition, the group that created the Web site.

"He just gave the whole country the finger," Gheen said.

Currently, there are no plans to expand the program in Los Angeles or to Delaware, bank spokeswoman Betsy Weinberger said.

Contact Leslie A. Pappas at 324-2880 or lpappas@delawareonline.com.

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs ... /-1/NEWS01

6:36 pm | BofA hopes to pump stock at meeting

RICK ROTHACKER
rrothacker@charlotteobserver.com

The last time Bank of America Corp. held an investors conference, in November 2001, new Chief Executive Ken Lewis told analysts about plans to extract internal growth from his giant company in an ailing economy.

More than five years later, at a forum that starts today in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., Lewis is expected to explain how his even bigger bank can grow on its own. This time, though, he faces a tough interest rate environment that is squeezing profits, and he's much closer to a deposit cap that limits U.S. acquisitions.

The event comes as the bank rolls out its new "Bank of Opportunity" marketing effort designed to show what it can do for customers. The first commercials were to debut during Sunday night's Oscars telecast.

Lewis, who turns 60 in April, is expected to showcase existing initiatives, such as the bank's "Keep the Change" savings program, and potentially present new ones. One key area executives have tapped for expansion is the Hispanic market, but a new credit card that can be used by illegal immigrants recently stirred criticism.

"They will try to address the questions about what are they going to focus on to get future growth," said Frank Barkocy, director of research at Keefe Managers, which owns Bank of America shares.

Back in 2001, Lewis was playing down the need to follow predecessor Hugh McColl Jr.'s penchant for acquisitions, while pushing efforts to improve operations and efficiency. He followed that script until 2003 when he announced plans to buy FleetBoston Financial Corp. for $47 billion.

Two years later, he picked up MBNA Corp. for $35 billion, forming the nation's biggest credit card company.

Since that deal, executives have said they could be entering another quiet period, perhaps only making fill-in acquisitions like the deal announced in November to buy wealth manager U.S. Trust Corp. Speculation, however, has continued to swirl about Bank of America's appetite for mortgage, investment banking or international purchases.

The goal of the conference, of course, is to stir a stock price that some say is weighed down by concerns about future deal making.

Last year, the stock climbed nearly 16 percent, outperforming the KBW Philadelphia Bank Index. But so far this year, shares are down nearly 1 percent, worse than a nearly 2 percent rise in the bank index. On Friday, shares fell 84 cents to $52.86.

If executives do a good job today and Tuesday, "the stock should rally on their comments," Barkocy said.

A look at Bank of America at the time of its past two investor conferences:

• Nov. 2001: $620 billion in assets; $8 billion in annual profits; 142,000 employees.

• This week: $1.5 trillion in assets; $21.1 billion in annual profits; 203,000 employees

Text goes here


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Read tomorrow's Charlotte Observer for more details on this developing story.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/ ... 783289.htm

http://link.toolbot.com/yahoo.com/66693


Bank of America Corp. (DE) (BAC) Summary, News, Key Stats
52.86
0.84(1.56%) 16,811,400 4:01pm ET

BAC 50.80 -1.99

http://finance.yahoo.com/charts#chart1: ... =undefined