Assuming 2 percent of the bank's home- fairness loans are charged off this year, the bring in may be $2.3 billion, Fitch Ratings analyst said in a March 14 report. Stated takings loan.

Merrill Lynch & Co. and Citigroup Inc., both based in New York, and Zurich-based UBS AG have enchanted writedowns of about $105 billion since the dart of 2007, mostly because of the keel over of the U.S. subprime mortgage market, according to Bloomberg data. Shares Slide , the biggest U.S. bank by assets, reported a first-quarter injury hold out week of $5.1 billion, smaller than analysts' most defeatist estimates. New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co., ranked third, said return declined 50 percent. , ranked fourth and based in Charlotte, posted an unexpected collapse of $393 million.

Bank of America floor 95 cents to $37.61 a percentage in 4:15 p.m. New York Stock Exchange composite. The descent slid 8.1 percent in the initially quarter, compared with JPMorgan's 1.6 percent oust and Citigroup's 27 percent decline.

The 24-member KBW Bank Index dropped 11 percent. Bank of America supplanted Citigroup continue year as the largest U.S. bank by store value. Bank of America's Tier 1 finance correlation -- a benchmark regulators use to screen a lender's skill to suffer accommodation losses -- rose to 7.51 percent at the end of the locale from 6.87 percent at the end of 2007.

The least for a ''well- capitalized'' rating from U.S. regulators is 6 percent. Wider Margin The pocket notice margin, the inequality between affect paid on and received from loans, widened to 2.73 percent from 2.61 percent on Dec. 31. Earnings flowering should commission the bank to assert its every three months dividend of 64 cents, a ways and means that will be revised if the U.S. husbandry enters a prolonged recession, Lewis said. ''The earnest guts of the bank appear to be working well and as they govern their mode through the impute crisis, they're contemporary to come out of this in very safe shape,'' Georges Yard, paramount investment strategist at Yared Investment Research in Wayzata, Minnesota, said in an interview.

Bank of America will spur deeper into the mortgage calling when it acquires Calabasas, California-based Countrywide Financial Corp., the U.S. shelter lender.

The agreement is on organize to be completed anciently in the third quarter, Lewis said. The stock-swap transaction, to begin with valued at about $4 billion, gives Bank of America a character in one out of every four national loans in the nation. Countrywide, with losses of $1.6 billion over the history two quarters, is scheduled to communication four times a year results on April 29. Visa IPO Earnings included a $776 million pretax rise linked to the transaction of shares in , the world's biggest credit-card network, and $170 million of restructuring costs.

San Francisco- based Visa set a record-breaking for U.S. prime universal offerings at the rear month by raising more than $19 billion, and the animals has since gained more than 60 percent. Bank of America ranked as Visa's second-largest bank proprietress after JPMorgan.

The world's biggest banks and brokerages have disclosed $290 billion of writedowns and trustworthiness losses since June because of in U.S. mortgage markets. They've raised more than $160 billion to renew capital, with Bank of America tapping popular investors for at least $13 billion after writedowns and trust losses that totaled at least $8.2 billion before today, according to details compiled by Bloomberg.

Bank of America said it can't come payments on 4.9 percent of its $75.9 billion acclaim press card portfolio as of March 31, up from 4.5 percent at the end of the aforementioned quarter.

The bank is the nation's biggest issuer of have faith cards. Foreclosures As much as 2.5 percent of the bank's $118 billion home- judiciousness portfolio may be uncollectible this year, mainly because of move stingingly prices in California and Florida, Chief Financial Officer said. Assuming 2 percent of the bank's home- disinterest loans are charged off this year, the tariff may be $2.3 billion, Fitch Ratings analyst said in a March 14 report.

If the cranky loans climb to 5 percent, the price could perfect $5.9 billion, he said. About 44 percent of Bank of America's home-equity loans are in California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida, four states where shield prices are sliding faster than the nationalist average. Countrywide, with $34 billion in home-equity loans as of Dec. 31, also concentrated on those regions.

All four ranked in the midst the top-drawer 10 states with the most foreclosure filings final month, according to Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac Inc., a -monger of oversight data. U.S. median snug harbor prices as of February were 15 percent below the extreme of $230,200 in July 2006, according to the Chicago-based National Association of Realtors.

Biggest Stakeholders Bank of America's largest stockholders at the end of 2007 are Barclays Global Investors, with 4.2 percent, State Street Corp., with 3.5 percent, and Vanguard Group Inc., with 3 percent, according to Bloomberg data.

The merchandise capitalization of $167 billion is about 8 percent greater than JPMorgan and about 27 percent more than Citigroup. Investors have speculated since at least 2006 that Bank of America might transmute a open-handed purchase overseas. Lewis said in September 2006 in Singapore that his troop was more focused on ''organic growth'' that would ratify revenue. About 90 percent of interest in the end year came from the U.S. and Canada, according to Bloomberg data.

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