Bank of America began in 1904 as Bank of Italy. Amadeo Giannini created the bank in San Francisco to service immigrants that were denied service by other banks.
In 1922 the name changed to Bank of America and Italy after Giannini acquired Banca dell’Italia Meridionale.
In 1930, the name Bank of America was finally adopted after a merger.
In 1956, BankAmerica was created as a holding company for Bank of America.
In 1983, the company expanded outside of California with the acquisition of SeaFirst, a Seattle, WA based bank.
In 1997, Bank of America merged with NationsBank.
In recent years, Bank of America has acquired Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch. The company has also been under fire for taking $20 billion in government TARP money in 2009.
In November 2019, the company announced that it was partnering with IBM to create a financial services ready public cloud.
Bank of America is currently the second-largest bank holding company in the US. The BoA network contains over 5500 branch locations and 16,000 ATMs.
