Bank of America – The Problematic Last Years
With such a great yet sometimes checkered history, Bank of America has experienced many problems. Starting as far back as in 1904 in Los Angeles when Amadeo Giannini first founded the then named Bank of Italy, offering a service to immigrants who were unwelcome by other banking establishments. In the most recent years, after having been saved by the government following the stock market crash of the late eighties, Bank of America has been in the headlines for less than stellar reasons.
So many lucrative acquisitions have been made along the years, creating what is now the United States of America’s second largest non oil related business. The merger with Meryl Lynch caused scandal across the headlines in 2009 in a deal where Bank of America ending up paying a fine of $33 million for improper conduct during the merger. The scandal hit headlines across the nation, and was a turning point for Bank of America. Yet since then, they have only caused more bad publicity for themselves.
Problems faced by the institution in the last years went on to include the multiple fraud accusations of 2010. Here a large number of public services such as hospitals and schools accused Bank of America of fraud and malpractice. Bank of America had to pay a huge fine to the tune of $137.7 million. All this came after in previous years, the American government had bailed out the company with sums of $20 billion following the crash of Wall Street and a streak of unwise money lending to South American countries in the late 1980′s.
If the Meryl Lynch incident and the multiple fraud accusations of 2010 were not be enough for the credibility of America’s largest bank, in 2010 alongside other money lenders and banks, Bank of America found itself once more in the center of a huge scandal. This particular scandal that involved these Bank of America foreclosures became known as the “robo” signing case.
Bank of America has pledged to stop “robo” signing in all of the 50 states in an attempt to try and save its’ reputation. However, the re-signing of so many documents manually is a case that is not so simple to do with just a pledge. The question on the lips of many is whether they really were the rightful owners of their properties and if the property was indeed owned prior to sale by the bank or other money lender. This latest scandal, taking place in the fall of 2010, is bringing Bank of America once again bad publicity.
