BANKAMERICA CORPORATION

American holding company incorporated on Oct. 7, 1968, which owns Bank of America National Trust and Savings Association (incorporated Nov. 3, 1930) and several subsidiaries engaged in financial services, insurance, real estate, investment management, computer leasing, and other banking-related services. Bank of America NT & SA has some 1,400 branches in California and operates subsidiary banks and financial institutions in several other U.S. states and in Europe, Latin America, and the Far East. It is one of the world's largest banks in assets. Headquarters for both BankAmerica Corporation and Bank of America NT & SA are in San Francisco. Bank of America NT & SA resulted from the merger of two earlier banking systems, both founded by Amadeo Peter Giannini. On Oct. 17, 1904, in San Francisco he opened a small neighbourhood bank called the Bank of Italy, which became prosperous in the period of rebuilding following the great earthquake of 1906. In 1907 he opened his first branch bank; and by the end of 1918, mainly through purchases of existing banks, Bank of Italy had 24 branches in 18 California cities; by 1929 there were 292. In 1927, in an effort to navigate through the new, more restrictive banking laws, Giannini began putting together another branch banking system, which, after a series of mutations, became known as the Bank of America of California; by the summer of 1930 it had 163 branches. On Nov. 3, 1930, in a complex merger and realignment of the two systems, with the addition of other individual California banks, he incorporated the Bank of America NT & SA (operating under U.S. federal authority) and Bank of America (operating under California authority); in 1934 the latter was absorbed by the former. At the time, these and other banks and financial institutions principally developed by Giannini were owned predominantly by Transamerica Corporation, a holding company that he had created in 1928. In 1930, because of ill health, he turned control of the corporation over to some New York bankers, who soon, in face of the Great Depression, began liquidating the banking empire. Giannini, recovering from his illness, waged a proxy war, won back control, and stopped the liquidation. Between 1937 and 1952 Transamerica divested itself of all stock in Bank of America NT & SA. Giannini and his son, Lawrence Mario Giannini, ruled Bank of America until their deaths in 1949 and 1952 respectively, when leadership passed to other executives. From the 1950s, the company expanded vigorously both in the United States and overseas. In 1957 it acquired control of Banca d'America e d'Italia with 65 branches in Italy. In 1962 it purchased control of a Swiss company, the Financial Corporation for Overseas Countries, with interests in several banks in Africa. Over the years it developed international banking offices in major U.S. cities and major cities overseas. (By 1975, international earnings contributed more than 40 percent of BankAmerica's income, before securities transactions.) In 1983 the company bought the Washington state bank Seafirst Corp. in what was the biggest U.S. interstate bank merger to date. In 1991 BankAmerica purchased Security Pacific Corporation, its major competitor in California. BankAmerica Corporation was organized in Delaware in 1968 as a holding company for Bank of America NT & SA and other financial subsidiaries.