BofA buys CountryWide for $4 billion.....
 

Amazing. Good job that BofA is huge and can hopefully absorb this failing mortgage company. While it now makes them the largest lender in the US, it also comes with a lot of liabilities.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/11/news...yes&eref=yahoo

Isn't BoA a multi trillion dollar company? $4b to them is like $100 to me. - Crazy buy either way

Charlotte, NC saves the US again!

If you count its depositors assets, but I'm sure when you put money in your savings account you do not consider it a donation to the bank. Their market cap is $170 billion, but given liabilities and other issues it could very well be less.

For example, nearly all of the big investment banks had leverage ratios around 1:30. It just broke on the wire today that WaMu and JP Morgan may be merging, very likely an insolvency issue with one of the parties.

The brutalness of this current credit crises is largely being under recognized given the absence of a one day stock market collapse.

when the fed cuts interest again in a couple weeks that'll help big time... They'll hopefully get things back to where they were a few years ago as far as lending goes.

good call by B of A otherwise countrywide was doomed to bankruptcy.........

lots of money exchanged there

sharp


very sharp

Ahhh, wrong bank then. One of them is worth trillions and bought out a mortgage company not to long back. I thought BoA had that kind of size since they like to act the part.

There is no bank worth trillians, by market capitalization Bank of America is the biggest.

That would be an incorrect statement.

you are thinking of citibank probably.

Oh yeah, citybank/group, that's right.. not just the largest bank but also the largest company in the world.

BofA already owned a large stake in Countrywide, which they accumulated at a much more expensive share price. They figured since Countrywide stock has gone down so much in the past year, they might as well throw a few billion more at it and acquire the whole company to catch maximum upside on the rebound.

hmmm, wonder if they will now let me auto-pay