Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan on Monday sent a letter to shareholders along with the firm’s annual report that detailed the bank’s history and its role in America’s growth as the nation prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding.
Moynihan noted that Bank of America’s oldest legacy institution, The Massachusetts Bank, was formed in 1784, just one year after the Revolutionary War concluded with the Treaty of Paris. The bank’s depositors helped the firm grow by lending money to new and expanding businesses that made up the early U.S. economy.
“From our country’s earliest days, we supported those communities. We have supported the development of American capitalism. We did what a bank does – help its customers and clients grow,” Moynihan wrote. “Bank of America’s legacy banks formed in communities around the country, and were there every step of the way as those communities filled out our nation.”
Bank of America also traces its roots to franchises in New England that date back to the early days of the country, as well its North Carolina company, which is the surviving company of those legacy banks and was formed over 150 years ago to help finance the development of the region’s industries as the U.S. developed from an agrarian society to an industrial society.
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“Funds from afar were not sufficient or readily available and local banks formed to help needed factories get built in their communities,” Moynihan wrote in reference to banks established along the Eastern Seaboard in the early years of America’s independence.
Banks in the nation’s capital grew along with the expansion of the federal government, while the firm’s Texas-based company helped fund the region’s resource boom and those located in the Great Plains spurred the economic growth of the Midwest and West. It also opened a bank in the Pacific Northwest.
Around 1930, A.P. Giannini’s Bank of Italy – which helped support the reconstruction of San Francisco after the great earthquake and fires of 1906 – purchased a small firm called The Bank of America, Los Angeles. After eventually consolidating, Giannini changed the name to Bank of America.
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“Companies that are now Bank of America provided funding for the Erie Canal, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the American government’s requirements for the War of 1812, World War I and World War II, as well as many other national priorities,” Moynihan wrote.
“Whether it was private citizens, governments or companies of every size, in communities across our growing country, Bank of America was there to help capitalism flourish. We were there to help foster the interdependent relationship between capitalism and democracy.”
“For the 250 years of the American idea in action, the activities of countless individuals, families, farmers and other small businesses, large institutions, governments at every level, the opportunities provided by capitalism – a financial return on labor through wages, and on capital and investments, interest on your idle funds, facilitating investments in bonds to build infrastructure, making loans to entrepreneurs to grow their businesses – helped build our country we have today,” he explained.
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The letter also discussed how Bank of America grew its presence around the world by helping U.S. firms pursue global ambitions as well as providing financial services at the federal government’s request to facilitate access to new markets or help rebuild in the wake of conflicts.
Among the examples cited were the bank opening for business in Argentina in 1917 to support American companies engaged in the wool trade, as well as the establishment of operations in Great Britain in 1931 as the U.S. emerged as a creditor nation after World War I.
In the aftermath of World War II, Bank of America became the first bank to open for business in Japan at the request of the U.S. occupation government to provide loans to shipping companies to restart Japan’s postwar economy.
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Bank of America opened in France in 1953 to support the post-World War II reconstruction of Europe and build on the success of the U.S. government’s post-war Marshall Plan. It also opened a Middle East headquarters in 1972 when it entered the newly formed United Arab Emirates to support U.S. companies developing the region’s resources.
