Bank of America
American multinational banking and financial services corporation
The Bank of America Corporation (Bank of America; often abbreviated BAC, BofA, or, less commonly, BOA) is an American multinational bank and financial services holding company headquartered at the Bank of America Corporate Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, with investment banking and auxiliary headquarters in Manhattan. The bank was formed by the merger of NationsBank and the legacy corporation of Bank of America in 1998. It is the second-largest banking institution in the United States by consolidated assets, after JPMorgan Chase. It is also the second-largest bank in the world by market capitalization, after JPMorgan Chase.
Among the Big Four banking institution and one of eight systemically important financial institutions in the United States; it competes with JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo. Its primary financial services revolve around commercial banking, wealth management, and investment banking.
Through past mergers, the oldest branch of the Bank of America franchise dates back to 1784, when Massachusetts Bank was chartered, becoming the first federally chartered joint-stock-owned bank in the United States. Another branch of its history goes back to the American-based Bank of Italy, founded by Amadeo Pietro Giannini in 1904, which provided various banking services to Italian immigrants who faced service discrimination at the time. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Giannini acquired Banca d'America e d'Italia in 1922 and eventually did business as Bank of America.
In the 1950s, the passage of landmark federal banking legislation facilitated rapid growth, quickly establishing prominent shares for the present bank's predecessors.
The public source identifies “Bank of America” as american multinational banking and financial services corporation. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bank, America and American.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q487907. VIAF identifies the subject as 155048466. The Library of Congress control number is n80026791. 4 of 9 selected statements include explicit references; 5 carry qualifiers and 2 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1998, 1784, 1904 and 1922.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bank of America” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.