Finance news

Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. bank by assets, posted its first loss since 1991 and cut the dividend after receiving emergency funds from the government to support the acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co.

The fourth-quarter loss of $1.79 billion, or 48 cents a share, compared with net income of $268 million, or 5 cents, a year earlier, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company said in a statement today. Results didn't include a $15.3 billion loss at Merrill, acquired this month. The 32-cent dividend was slashed to a penny. Citigroup Inc. analyst Keith Horowitz estimated on Jan. 11 that the bank had a $3.6 billion loss.

The losses, coupled with the government lifeline of $138 billion, raise doubts about the future of Chief Executive Officer Kenneth D. Lewis, who engineered takeovers of unprofitable New York-based brokerage Merrill and ailing mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. during the worst market slump since the Great Depression. Bank of America plummeted 75 percent in New York trading through yesterday since the Merrill deal was announced in September.

“This thing is unraveling so fast Lewis may know his job is lost,” said Paul Miller, an analyst at Friedman Billings Ramsey Group Inc. in Arlington, Virginia, who has an “underperform” rating on Bank of America. The management team has “lost credibility,” he said before results were announced.

Changing Course

The bank rose 63 cents, or 7.6 percent, to $8.95 in early trading at 6:21 a.m. in New York.

The government said earlier today it will invest $20 billion in Bank of America and guarantee $118 billion of assets to help the company absorb Merrill and prevent the financial crisis from deepening. The agreement is part of a commitment to “support financial-market stability,” the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said in a joint statement shortly after midnight in Washington.

Lewis, 61, said Sept. 15 the purchase of Merrill gave Bank of America “one of the premier wealth management” companies and was “a great opportunity for our shareholders.” He also said at the time that the company didn't anticipate needing further financial aid from the government. The takeover was announced as New York-based securities firm Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. announced the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Bank of America officials then told regulators last month that the Merrill deal might be abandoned because of worse-than- expected results, three people with knowledge of the situation said. The government insisted the transaction proceed because its collapse would create new turmoil in the financial system, the people said earlier this week, declining to be identified because the talks were private.

Stock Slide

Bank of America fell 18 percent yesterday to $8.32 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, closing at the lowest level since March 25, 1991. The decline occurred on speculation the company would need financial assistance because of losses at Merrill.

The shares have dropped 42 percent since Jan. 6 when Lewis told employees that he expected the company's performance to fall short of estimates. The company is cutting as many as 35,000 jobs to reduce annual costs by about $7 billion. Bank of America also has taken steps to counter loan losses by selling a $2.8 billion share of its China Construction Bank stake.

Today's emergency action shows how government officials, led by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, have failed to quell concerns about the viability of the nation's biggest banks, even after deploying $350 billion of financial-rescue funds. Financial companies have disclosed more than $1 trillion of writedowns and credit market losses since 2007 linked to the collapse in subprime mortgages, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

TARP Funds

The Bank of America plan mirrors the emergency actions taken in November for New York-based Citigroup, when the government explicitly insured the bank against losses on toxic assets, with taxpayers footing the bill. The U.S. backed up $306 billion of Citigroup real-estate loans and securities, sharing losses beyond $29 billion for what may be some of the company's worst holdings.

In the Bank of America deal, the government will protect a $118 billion pool of assets that a U.S. official said includes residential and commercial real-estate holdings and credit- default swaps. The official spoke to reporters on a conference call on condition of anonymity cash advance.

The $20 billion purchase of preferred shares, which carry an 8 percent dividend, will be made later today. The funds come from the first half of the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program. The U.S. Senate voted yesterday to allow the release of the next $350 billion of the program.

Fire Fighting

“This is more short-term fire-fighting tactics,” said Ed Rogers, chief executive officer of Tokyo-based hedge-fund adviser Rogers Investment Advisors Y.K.

The U.S. had already injected $15 billion into Bank of America and $10 billion into Merrill to bolster the combined company against the credit crunch.

Bank of America charged off $5.54 billion of loans as uncollectible, equal to 2.36 percent of total average loan and leases, compared with 0.91 percent a year earlier, the statement said. The provision for loan losses increased to $8.5 billion from $6.45 billion in the third quarter because of “economic stress on consumers,'' the bank said.

Merrill Lynch's loss included writedowns of $1.9 billion on leveraged loans, $1.2 billion in investment securities and $1.1 billion on commercial real estate. The company also cut the value of its contracts with financial guarantors by $3.2 billion, Bank of America said. Merrill's wealth management division had $2.6 billion in net revenue with the best performance stemming from its U.S. advisory unit, the bank said.

Thain's Role

Merrill's results weren't part of the bank's financial statements because the transaction was completed on Jan. 1.

The Countrywide acquisition is “on track'' and likely to reach $900 million in annual cost savings by 2011, the bank said.

Lewis has spent $129 billion on acquisitions, including regional lenders FleetBoston Financial Corp. and LaSalle Bank, credit-card issuer MBNA and investment manager U.S. Trust Co.

Bank of America agreed to buy Merrill, the world's largest brokerage firm, after a weekend of negotiations between Lewis and Merrill CEO John Thain, for $19.4 billion.

Acquisitions

“Bank of America has all kinds of problems with its acquisitions,” said Gary Townsend, a former bank analyst and president of Hill-Townsend Capital LLC in Chevy Chase, Maryland. “They've been so acquisitive, they find themselves with very little in tangible equity.”

Bank of America became aware of Merrill's fourth-quarter losses after shareholders approved the takeover on Dec. 5, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier today, quoting a statement from the company. After the vote, Paulson and Bernanke warned Lewis about the risks to the financial system if the deal was scrapped, the Journal said, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.

The agreement with the Treasury, the Fed and FDIC calls on Bank of America to absorb the first $10 billion of losses from its pool of assets, the “large majority” of which were assumed with the Merrill purchase, according to the government's statement. The company will absorb 10 percent of any additional losses, with the government on the hook for the remainder.

Fed Backstop

The Fed will backstop assets with a loan, after the government's first $10 billion in losses, shared by the Treasury and the FDIC. The asset pool includes cash assets with a current book value of as much as $37 billion and derivatives with maximum potential future losses of as much as $81 billion, according to the term sheet provided by the government.

Separately, the FDIC said today it plans to propose changing its bond-guarantee program for banks to cover debt as long as 10 years, up from the current three-year maturity. The FDIC also plans to propose rule changes to the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program.

The U.S. government will use all of its resources “to preserve the strength of our banking institutions and promote the process of repair and recovery and to manage risks,” the joint statement said.

Bernanke said earlier this week that troubled assets remain a “continuing barrier to private investment” in financial institutions and recommended that they be extracted with government help. He urged a “comprehensive plan,” with one possibility being to erect a so-called bad bank to purchase and administer the troubled loans and securities.

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