Bank of America Corp (BOA) CEO Brian Moynihan told employees in a year-end letter that he bolstered the firm against risk and will make more improvements next year.
“We greatly strengthened our risk culture in 2011, and that work has laid the foundation that will carry us through whatever turbulent times may lie ahead,” Moynihan wrote in a letter posted on Friday to an internal employee Web site.
A copy of the message was obtained by Bloomberg News.
Photo: Bloomberg
The bank is “simplifying our business model and organization, continuing to shed non-core assets and businesses and reducing risk-weighted assets,” he wrote. “2012 will be a year for continued improvement in risk-management practices across the company.”
Moynihan, 52, plans to trim about US$5 billion in annual costs by 2014 at the second-biggest US lender to combat stagnant revenue and a sagging stock price.
Shares of the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank dropped 58 percent this year amid rising costs tied to faulty mortgages and concern that Europe’s debt crisis will derail the global economic recovery.
BOA cut riskier assets by US$117 billion from the third quarter of last year and reduced risks tied to European sovereign and corporate debt by 43 percent since 2009, Moynihan wrote in the letter.
His predecessor, Kenneth Lewis, spent more than US$130 billion on acquisitions to create the largest US lender by assets, a rank the company held until this year.
To improve capital levels ahead of stricter international rules, Moynihan has agreed to sell more than US$47 billion in assets and units since taking over at the start of last year. The bank is mostly done with such divestitures, he wrote.
“We can focus all our energy and [US]$3 billion in technology investments — the ‘peace dividend’ that derives from no acquisitions/integrations — on increasing the pace of innovations” and improving service, he wrote.
Meanwhile, US regulators will extend the comment period for the so-called Volcker rule, giving lawmakers and banks more time to seek changes in the proposed proprietary trading ban required by the Dodd-Frank Act.
The comment deadline, initially set for Jan. 13, will be pushed back 30 days to Feb. 13, according to a joint statement released on Friday by the four agencies that issued the proposal in October.
The change may extend the comment period until a vote by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the last of five agencies required to approve the measure.
The proposed rule, named for former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, was included in the regulatory overhaul to rein in risky trading by banks that benefit from deposit insurance and Fed borrowing privileges.
The Fed, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Securities and Exchange Commission released a joint notice of proposed rule-making for the measure that would take effect on July 21, with a two-year transition period.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last