Word: bankamerica
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...sharply limited the ability of trafficking tycoons to invest or spend their money. In the past year the Government has clamped down on twelve major banks that failed to file the forms and may have been accepting drug money, wittingly or otherwise. In January the Treasury Department fined BankAmerica a record $4.75 million for such offenses...
Five years later, Armacost has lost some of that youthful exuberance. BankAmerica's earnings have steadily declined since he took charge, and last week the San Francisco-based financial giant (assets: $118.5 billion) said that it lost $337 million last year, its first annual deficit since 1932. The bank, now second in size to Citicorp (assets: $175.6 billion), also disclosed that it was suspending payment of stock dividends...
...BankAmerica is losing money because it is saddled with many shaky loans. Most of them were extended by Armacost's predecessor, A.W. Clausen, who now heads the World Bank. Like other big banks, BankAmerica made risky loans to developing countries and to real estate and shipping firms. But it also became the world's largest commercial lender to farmers, who are now under severe financial pressure. Concedes Stephen McLin, a BankAmerica senior vice president: "Our credit standards were not the greatest." The bank wrote off $1.6 billion worth of loans last year. Other low-grade credits are still...
Armacost has taken steps to bolster BankAmerica. Easing a capital shortage, he last year sold the headquarters building for $660 million and the bank's consumer-loan subsidiary for $405 million...
Wall Street expects BankAmerica to make money again soon. If it does not, the bank's board of directors, which has supported Armacost, may grow impatient with his failure to overcome the troubles he inherited...