BofA to hire 1,000 small-biz bankers

October 18th, 2010, 6:00 am
by Jan Norman, small-business columnist

Bank of America says it will hire 1,000 small-business bankers by 2012, Reuters reports, returning to customers it virtually abandoned in 2008.

Before the recession, Bank of America was one of the nation’s — and Orange County’s — largest participants in the U.S. Small Business Administration’s guaranteed loan program, specializing in small dollar amounts (its average 2007 O.C. loan was $31,780).

Then in 2008 and 2009, after receiving a $20 billion federal bailout for its purchase of Merrill Lynch, BofA cut by 90% the number of SBA loans it made, according to a report by Service Employees International Union.

In Orange County, for example, Bank of America made 465 loans for a total of $14.8 million, more SBA-guaranteed loans than any other lender in 2007. In 2007-08, BofA made 130 SBA loans for $4 million; 2008-09, 7 loans for $260,000; and in the first 11 months of the 2010 fiscal year, 11 loans for $1.9 million.

The bank says it will start hiring bankers in Los Angeles, Dallas, Washington D.C. and Baltimore by the end of the year, Reuters reports. These bankers will focus on businesses with annual revenues of $250,000 to $3 million.

The announcement is the latest from big corporations that they are seeking business with small firms. Consider:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has been adding grocery sections to its mega-stores, says it will buy more from local farms.
Twitter has introduced self-serve ads for small businesses.
Back in 2007, this blog regularly ran posts about big business courting small business, some of them mainly
marketing ploys:

Best Buy opened business centers inside 200 of its stores.
HP created the Small Business Toolbox.
AT&T, Symantec and Iomega also announced new products specifically for the small-business market.
Skype offered a small-business pack.
IBM said in 2007 it was going to make small business a priority.
But these announcements virtually disappeared as the economy tanked in 2008.

As I observed in 2007, these affections for small businesses may go in cycles. I recalled writing in 1997 about corporations, including Microsoft, Apple, Pacific Bell (before it was purchased by SBC), Southern California Edison, Wells Fargo and even Bank of America, vying for small-business attention.

http://jan.ocregister.com/2010/10/18/bo ... ers/47378/