美國銀行 (BAC) 2008 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Welcome to today's quarterly earnings announcement teleconference.

At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode.

(Operator Instructions).

We'll take questions in turn following the presentation.

Please note this call may be recorded.

It's now my pleasure to turn the program over to Kevin Stitt.

Please begin, sir.

Good morning.

This is Kevin Stitt, Bank of America Investor Relations.

Before Ken Lewis and Joe Price begin their comments, let me remind you that this presentation does contain some forward-looking statements regarding both our financial condition and financial results, and that these statements involve certain risks that may cause actual results in the future to be different from our current expectations.

These factors include, among other things, changes in economic conditions, changes in interest rates, competitive pressures within the financial services industry, and legislative or regulatory requirements that may affect our businesses.

For additional factors, please see our press release and SEC documents.

With that, let me turn it over to Ken Lewis.

Good morning.

I don't need to tell you what extraordinary times we're experiencing.

The economy and subsequently the credit markets literally hit a wall starting in September and culminating late in December, with the greatest impact of my almost 40 years in banking.

As you have seen in earnings reports so far, nobody operating in the capital markets or lending to the consumer has been immune.

While 2008 was a very disappointing year, we still made a $4 billion profit, even as we experienced more than $10 billion in capital market losses and $27 billion in credit costs.

We suffered as the economy slowed materially, as we were long credit risk in our core activities of commercial and consumer lending, as well as in our capital markets businesses.

So the question on my mind and your minds is what are we doing about it?

We managed our risk position down during 2008, reducing wherever we could the relevant positions in every area.

Due to liquidity, we could not get that risk down far enough.

We continue to rework our credit risk appetite in consumer.

We've instituted LTV, debt to income ratios, and other restrictions which are more prudent in light of the times we are facing.

This of course raises concerns with legislators and other consistencies that we may be pulling back on credit when consumers, small businesses and commercial customers need it most.

There is no doubt our overall appetite on credit risk is greatly reduced.

Given the [rate loss] and provisions here and throughout the industry, how could it be otherwise.

Nonetheless, as you will see in a few minutes, even while we seek to reduce risk, we continue to offer loans and credit to individuals, small businesses and corporate customers.

We originated $115 billion in new credits during the fourth quarter alone.

In our card Company, we have revisited and revised our unsecured underwriting terms and our card terms, focusing on the programs which will produce better charge-off results.

In our commercial areas we continue to aggressively work on credit book to reduce our exposures.

During the last two years, we have purchased sizable credit exposures in our acquisitions of Countrywide and LaSalle which have added to our credit positions, but we continue to restructure these operations and work to reduce risk levels.

We've been working on the integration plans for Merrill since September and are now carrying through those plans.

So where does that leave us?

The core businesses at Bank of America continue to operate quite well.

We continue to grow our franchise, focusing on customers and associates.

We have had healthy growth in checking accounts and deposits.

Customers continue to seek us out as a Company of strength.

Metrics on customer favorability, brand awareness, customer satisfaction and purchase consideration all improved last year.

And we continue to be a leader in helping to find solutions for the credit crisis.

We are proud of this record.

I think it's important for investors to understand that we do this because it's good business.

The recession and credit crisis will end some day, and people will remember that our Company was there for them in hard times.

That will be an essential element in our opportunity to return to the kind of profitability all of us want out of our Company.

With that backdrop, I'll discuss fourth quarter earnings, focusing mainly on the highlights across the Company with some specific comments on individual businesses.

Then Joe will go into more detail on certain issues including the actions we announced today, capital markets, credit quality, net interest income and Merrill Lynch.

Finally, we'll touch on our thoughts looking into 2009 and discuss some of the near term trends that will impact earnings.

On January 1st, we completed the purchase of Merrill Lynch, establishing a company unrivaled in its breadth of financial services and global reach.

This merger reinforces Bank of America's position as a leading global financial institution.

The merger creates in our opinion the most attractive US consumer banking franchise with broad earnings, diversification, and an attractive growing deposit base.

One of the largest wealth management businesses in the world with approximately 20,000 financial advisors and more than $2 trillion in client assets; a world leader in the global markets and corporate investment banking businesses, particularly in the areas of lending, debt and equity underwriting, trading, liquidity, payments management, research, and merger and acquisition advice.

And unparalleled in the number of commercial clients we touch through business lending and treasury services.

Longer term, the combination should be an earnings powerhouse with leading market share in almost all of its businesses.

We are happy that John Thain has assumed a major role at Bank of America.

John is in charge of global corporate investment banking as well as global wealth and investment management, both of which will incorporate most of Merrill's businesses.

Since most of you are focused on the short-term, let's turn to that.

Last quarter we said that market turbulence, economic uncertainty, and rising unemployment would take its toll on quarterly earnings, and that has certainly been the result for the fourth quarter, both at Bank of America and particularly at Merrill Lynch.

The United States is currently in a severe recession, affecting all sectors of the economy.

Congress' passage of the financial stabilization plan, as well as other programs put in place, are starting to stabilize credit markets and promote liquidity, but at a pace slower than any of us would like.

We believe it will take time before substantial benefits are seen in the health of the consumer and the impact on GDP growth.

Consequently, we think the prudent decision is to take our dividend to $0.01 rather than to wait and see how earnings will evolve in 2009.

This reduction will preserve approximately $2 billion in quarterly dividends that would have been paid out.

You saw in the release that Merrill Lynch experienced a fourth quarter loss of $15.5 billion that Joe will talk about in a moment.

That loss materialized late in the quarter in December and presented us with a decision.

We went to our regulators and told them that we would not -- that we could not close the deal without their assistance.

As a result, we have agreed to the issuance of $20 billion in Tier 1 qualifying TARP preferred, as well as the issuance of an additional preferred of $4 billion in exchange for an asset guarantee that is essentially insurance protection on approval of capital markets related assets.

We believe those actions were in the best interest of Bank of America and the financial system by limiting significant additional downside risk.

These actions also allow us to turn our attention to consolidating and recognizing the long-term strategic benefits of the two companies.

Turning to earnings, Bank of America in the fourth quarter reported a loss of $1.8 billion or $2.4 billion after preferred dividends or $0.48 per diluted share.

However, for the entire year, we did remain profitable, earning $4 billion or $2.6 billion after preferred dividends.

As we experienced in the third quarter, earnings in the fourth quarter were seriously impacted by the headwinds of continued high credit costs, severe market turbulence and losses related to one-time events.

Although it's difficult to focus on what is going right at this time, I do think it's imperative to understand that most of our main businesses remain profitable in the fourth quarter.

Global consumer and small business banking, earnings of $835 million, global wealth and investment management, earnings of $511 million.

And within global corporate investment banking, business lending made $301 million, and treasury services made $756 million.

While these earnings and these businesses in some cases are substantially lower than earnings in normal times, they're still profitable, even with the significant increases in credit costs, lower customer activity and other market headwinds.

An additional positive is that our retail businesses are experiencing a significant growth in deposits even as we operate in a low interest rate environment.

Average core retail deposits grew almost $12 billion, or 2%, including the expected runoff in deposits of Countrywide.

If you exclude the impact of Countrywide, retail deposits grew just short of $19 billion or 3.5%, which we believe is a multiple of the overall market and was done while we maintained pricing discipline.

As we experienced during the MBNA integration, approximately $7 billion of deposits left Countrywide after initiating more rational pricing.

The combination of deposit growth and anticipated stabilization of the markets should have a positive impact in 2009.

However, more than offsetting deposits this quarter were several events related to the market turbulence.

These events included losses associated with CDO related exposure, auction rate securities and legacy trading books, write-downs in leveraged finance, CMBS and private equity, additional support of the Columbia cash funds and a challenging trading environment that impacted our trading results.

In addition, the economy weakening in the third quarter is evidenced by rising unemployment, bankruptcies and continuing home price declines.

This weakening drove additional credit deterioration across our loan portfolio, causing us to add substantially to our allowance for loan losses.

Total revenue for the fourth quarter was approximately $16 billion on an FTE basis, down approximately $4 billion or 20% from the third quarter.

Net interest income rose 12% from the third quarter while non-interest income decreased 68%.

Driving much of the decrease in non-interest income was this impact of continuing market disruption and trading account profits, equity investment income and other income.

Non-interest expense decreased 6% from the third quarter, driven by lower personnel costs, primarily incentive compensation.

Provision expense of $8.5 billion increased by $2.1 billion from the third quarter.

Net charge-offs rose $1.2 billion to $5.5 billion.

The increase in reserves of approximately $3 billion brings the allowance for loan losses -- loan and lease losses to $23.1 billion, or 2.5% of our loan and lease portfolio.

Earnings in each of our businesses were significantly impacted by all the factors I just have detailed.

Let me spend a few minutes discussing each of those businesses.

Global consumer and small business banking earned $835 million, down $504 million from the third quarter as stable revenue levels, lower expenses and lower taxes partially offset an increase in provision expense of $1.1 billion.

The retail deposit story remains very positive, as I mentioned.

Although the pace of growth is down from levels a year ago, we continue to generate net new checking and saving accounts.

For the second year in a row, we grew net new checking accounts by more than 2 million.

The recent drop in interest rates is driving a significant increase in mortgage applications, mainly re-fis, which is providing a very good start, a very good start to production levels for 2009.

Global wealth and investment management earned $511 million in the fourth quarter, which is actually up from the third quarter and from the fourth quarter a year ago.

Driving the comparison from last quarter was the fact that our support of the Columbia cash funds, $226 million, was less than the support in the third quarter.

Global corporate investment banking lost $2.4 billion in the quarter, as positive earnings and business lending, which were $301 million, and treasury services, $656 million, were offset by the market results in CMAS.

Treasury services actually had a pretty good year with earnings this quarter up significantly from the third quarter.

For the full year, they earned $2.7 billion, benefiting from core deposit growth and the flight to quality.

Business lending produced linked quarter average commercial loan growth of $10 billion or 3% with revenue growth of 15%.

CMAS lost $3.6 billion which Joe will address in a minute.

Not included in the three business segments is equity investment income with a negative $387 million.

These results were driven by minimal cash gains offset by lower valuations and impairments.

Now, before I turn it over to Joe, let me make a couple of comments about the current environment, some of which references my earlier comments.

As I said, the economy is experiencing a severe recession.

Receding home prices, rising unemployment and bankruptcies make it difficult to predict the timing of an economic rebound.

We believe the economy will continue to be a challenge throughout 2009, with some potential early signs of stabilization during the second half of the year.

Currently, employment weakness is expected to continue through a good part of 2009, as it lags the turn in GDP with unemployment rising in excess of 8%.

Credit quality will continue to be an issue over the next few quarters, with provision and charge-offs remaining at elevated levels and perhaps not improving until the latter half of 2009.

Our Tier 1 capital ratio is estimated to be 9.15% at year-end, with a tangible common ratio of approximately 2.83%.

As a point of reference, if you consider the OCI associated with higher quality MBS that we expect will pay off in full, and the restricted CCB shares, that would add more than 40 basis points to the ratio or 3.27%.

My point being that this ratio, while important, is impacted by certain factors that don't really influence how we run the business.

Joe will discuss what our pro forma ratios will look like, given our actions so far this year.

Given our economic outlook, we still believe most of our core businesses can produce positive earnings for 2009, assuming a continued tight grip on expense levels across the Company.

We expect these earnings will also be accretive to capital in 2009.

Remember, we sold some of our CCB investment in early January, which will result in approximate pretax gain of $2 billion in the first quarter.

Most importantly, we remain committed to serving our customers and clients while driving profitability during these tougher times.

I know I'm repeating myself here, but these times continue to be increasingly difficult on all of us, including our shareholders, our associates and our customers.

With the expanded investment in our Company by the Federal Government, we intend to play a major role in restoring the economy of the United States to a healthy rate of growth.

We will do this by providing credit to consumers, small and large businesses, and state and local governments.

I have recently created a senior management team to oversee the Bank of America credit initiative, which will meet weekly to review lending levels in each of the categories that I mentioned.

This team will report monthly to the public on lending activity.

This reporting will be in addition to any reports requested by our regulators, the Treasury or Congress.

Going forward, the role of banks must be to fuel the economy with credit, while abiding by the inescapable transparency and accountability inherent in the use of public money for any purpose.

Bank of America acknowledges the responsibilities of the Company in the use of public funds, and stands ready to play the role as the leading bank to help reverse the current economic recession and restore America as the world's leader in business innovation and progress.

Our acquisitions of both Countrywide and Merrill Lynch were directed at strengthening the franchise, but also contributed to marketplace stability, and we remain a partner for our customers and clients, critically providing credit, helping them restructure their balance sheets, and giving them advice on how to best navigate their individual financial situations.

Most of you I think are well aware of our home loan modification program that is projected to modify over $100 billion in mortgages and over three years keep up to 630,000 borrowers in their home.

We have 6,000 associates in our home retention division working with borrowers.

During 2008, the home retention division completed over 300,000 workouts.

We are working out two troubled loans for every one on which we foreclose.

Bank of America last year provided more than $150 billion toward lending, investing and grant dollars to America's small businesses and communities and to support lower and moderate income individuals and communities.

Bank of America's $1.5 trillion commitment in 10 years is unparalleled in the business.

Business lending remains strong, and we have continued making loans to states and municipalities in a time of extraordinary uncertainty.

Our team is doing everything they can to operate as efficiently as possible, and to build the earnings power of the franchise so when conditions improve, you will see the benefits.

Now, with that I'll turn it over to Joe to expand a bit on the quarter as well as on some of the points that I've referenced.

Thanks, Ken.

As Ken mentioned, we entered into several agreements with the various government agencies in light of Merrill Lynch's fourth quarter loss.

These actions will replenish capital and provide protection, essentially insurance against significant downside risk on a pool of $118 billion in capital markets related exposures.

Now, in doing this, we've insulated in large part future significant losses from the asset classes that drove Merrill Lynch's loss.

This wrapped pool includes assets that when combined with other losses, where exposure no longer exists, represents some two-thirds of Merrill Lynch's fourth quarter loss.

In doing so, we expanded the coverage to include substantially similar exposures on the Bank of America platform as these assets will be managed together in the ongoing Company.

From the standpoint of the Bank of America capital markets loss in the fourth quarter, the pool includes assets that drove about the same percentage of our losses.

Generally speaking, the wrap covers domestic, predisruption or legacy leverage loans, and commercial real estate loans, those that were largely acquisition related facilities originally intended to be securitized, CDOs, financial guarantor counterparty exposure, certain trading counterparty exposure and certain investment securities.

The terms of the agreement are that in exchange for us issuing preferred stock of $4 billion which pays a dividend of 8%, and warrants, the combined government agencies will absorb 90% of the losses on this pool after an initial $10 billion first loss that we retained.

We retain 10% of the losses in excess of the first loss position.

Now, we'll continue to manage these assets in the ordinary course of business, and retain the income from the aggregate pool.

There's some more details in our filings on the specific provisions.

While the platforms still carry market and credit risk, by entering the agreement we have limited the downside on much of the capital markets' legacy cash positions, as well as selected counter parties in exchange for the first loss position in a premium.

Assets included in the wrap will carry a 20% risk weighting for capital purposes.

Let me now turn to earnings and begin by elaborating a bit more on fourth quarter results before turning to credit quality, capital, and Merrill Lynch.

Turning first to GCIB, and more specifically, capital markets and advisory services.

As Ken mentioned, this was one of the most difficult capital markets environments in history, and the fourth quarter was particularly severe.

Prices continued to decline across a broad spectrum of asset classes.

Global deleveraging accelerated, volatility and illiquidity continued to disrupt equity and credit markets, and correlation trades experienced significant divergence, all of which made for an incredibly challenging backdrop in addition to normal fourth quarter seasonality.

All this led to very disappointing results, a net loss of $3.6 billion in CMAS.

On a positive note, investment banking fees were up 30% from the third quarter to $618 million.

Now, we would characterize our market disruption charges this quarter as approximately $4.6 billion.

These charges continue to be centered in CDO related write-downs as well as a couple other areas.

Now, let me start with leveraged lending, where we ended the quarter with exposure of $3.6 billion, which is all funded, down $2.9 billion from September.

$1.7 billion of the reduction was the transfer of bonds to the corporate investment portfolio where they will be carried as an investment.

The remaining reduction was a combination of sales, write-downs and terminations.

Legacy or predisruption exposure is down to $2.3 billion, and is carried as $0.67.

During the quarter, we wrote down an additional $425 million versus $648 million in the first nine months of 2008, as valuations continued to erode due to spread widening.

On the CMBS side, we ended the year with $7.6 billion in exposure, down 7% from the third quarter, of which $6.9 billion is funded.

As always, remind you approximately 80% is comprised of larger ticket floating rate debt, most of which was acquisition related.

This floating rate debt was written down approximately $500 million.

We also recorded $328 million of losses associated with equity investments we made in acquisition-related financing transactions.

There were several other legacy books where we continued to record losses, including $740 million in structured credit trading, of which about $400 million was counterparty valuation losses.

This book as well as our other credit products experienced losses as cash spreads gapped out disproportionately, and extreme dislocations in basis correlations occurred.

We also lost $589 million on non-US high grade MBS as the severe spread movements were not limited to the US.

Now, finally, in the supplemental package you can see our CDO and subprime related exposure, along with the changes during the quarter where we recorded losses of $1.7 billion.

The losses were largely comprised of approximately $848 million of super senior CDO write-downs, a charge of approximately $400 million to reflect the counterparty risk associated with our insured super senior positions, and additional write-downs of $423 million mainly on positions that we retained from CDO liquidations.

Now, at the end of December, our unhedged subprime super senior related exposure dropped to just below $1 billion, $980 million to be specific, while bonds retained from liquidations were about $2 billion.

Unhedged super senior related exposure including the securities retained from liquidations now totaled $5.3 billion.

Our remaining hedged exposure of $1.5 billion, which is all high grade, is carried at $0.41 on the dollar and approximately 71% of that, of the wrappers, are from monolines.

This exposure is included on the schedules in the supplemental package along with the relevant information.

Now, before I move off these legacy exposures, let me say that the domestic CMBS and leveraged loans as well as the CDOs, both the hedged and unhedged, are now covered under the government wrap.

As I told you last quarter, we agreed to offer to buy back auction rate securities that we sold to certain customers.

During the fourth quarter we actually repurchased approximately $4.7 billion, bringing our total holdings to $7.6 billion.

Valuation declines in the quarter cost us approximately $410 million, of which most was recorded in the GCIB unit.

Our estimated remaining repurchase commitment was $675 million at year end.

Now, let me switch to credit quality.

We began seeing a decidedly negative impact on our customers from the slowing economy, particularly the consumer, and these pressures accelerated in December.

This is evident in spending patterns as well as credit performance.

As a result, fourth quarter provision of $8.5 billion exceeded net charge-offs, resulting in the addition of approximately $3 billion to the reserve.

Reflective of continued economic stress on the consumer, reserves were added for most consumer related products, most notably home equity, credit card and consumer lending.

The reserve addition also includes $750 million associated with the reduction in expected principal cash flows on the Countrywide impaired portfolio, driven by continued deterioration in the economy, and the home price outlook.

On the commercial side, we added approximately $460 million to the reserves for small business, broad based deterioration in the non-real estate commercial portfolios, as well as the home builder portfolio.

This commercial increase is reflective of the slowdown in consumer spending, continued global financial markets turmoil, and housing value declines.

Our reserve now stands at $23.1 billion or 2.5% of our loan and lease portfolio.

On a held basis, net chargeoffs in the quarter increased 52 basis points from the third quarter to 2.36% of the portfolio, or $5.5 billion.

On a managed basis, total net losses in the quarter also increased 52 basis points to 2.84% of the managed loan portfolio, or about $7.5 billion.

Managed net losses in the consumer portfolios were 3.46% versus 2.89% in the third quarter.

Managed consumer credit card net losses represent 54% of total consumer losses.

Managed consumer credit card net losses as a percent of the portfolio increased to 7.16% from 6.4% in the third quarter.

30-day plus delinquencies and managed consumer credit card increased 79 basis points to 6.68%, while 90-day plus delinquencies increased 28 basis points to 3.16%.

Now, we've continued to see increased delinquencies across our card portfolio, even more so in the states most affected by housing problems.

California and Florida make up a little less than a quarter of our domestic consumer card book, but represent about a third of the losses.

Clearly, with unemployment levels projected to go beyond 8% in the US, we would expect the consumer credit card net loss ratio to increase as well, and probably exceed unemployment levels by at least 100 basis points and be further impacted by decreasing loan levels.

Credit quality in our consumer real estate business also continued to deteriorate from the third quarter.

Our largest concentrations are in California and Florida, which combined, represents about 40% of the home equity portfolio and represented about 65% of the losses.

Home equity net losses increased approximately $149 million to $1.1 billion, or 2.92%, versus 2.53% in the prior quarter.

30 plus performing delinquencies increased 47 basis points to 1.75%, while NPAs increased 41 basis points to 1.86%.

Now, we have seen HELOC utilization rates tick up about 200 basis points to 52% driven by additional draws and slower payments.

Our ending home equity balance of $153 billion was up slightly during the quarter.

New business and increased utilization net of paydowns contributed approximately $5.1 billion in growth which was partially offset by closed accounts and charge-offs.

Now, as we said last quarter, with the increased economic and credit pressures, we continue to believe that the loss rate will cross the 4% mark in 2009.

Now, our residential mortgage portfolio showed an increase in net losses to $466 million, or 73 basis points for the quarter.

That would be 62 basis points net of the insurance wrap that we have on that product.

Excluding our community reinvestment act portfolio, and that portfolio totals 7% of the residential book, losses would have been $340 million or 57 basis points, so about 46 basis points net of both the CRA and the insurance wrap.

Now, we've continued to see increased delinquencies and losses across our portfolio, again, even more so in the states most affected by the housing problems.

California and Florida, which combined comprise 42% of the balances, drove 63% of the net losses.

Now, although approximately $119 billion or 48% of our residential mortgage portfolio carries the risk mitigation protection, it does not cover our CRA programs.

$70 million of net losses this quarter were covered by insurance, which reduces the net losses to 62 basis points on the portfolio versus the reported 73 basis points.

Now, I should note that we continue to reduce whole loan balances through sales, or by converting them to securities as examples of many actions we're taking to fortify liquidity.

This has the effect of bringing down the average loan balances, thereby negatively impacting the reported loss rates.

However, having said that, we do see continued deterioration and worsening economic conditions could drive a loss rate in excess of 100 basis points net of our insurance.

Turning to our other consumer portfolios, the auto portfolio at the end of December was about $26 billion in loans.

Net losses in the quarter were $155 million or an annualized 2.44% of the portfolio, up from 1.68% in the third quarter.

Although a portion of this increase was due to seasonality in this business, reduced collateral values as well as economic stress on the consumer also contributed to the higher losses.

Within card services, we have a consumer lending business that has about $28 billion, which is mostly comprised of unsecured consumer loans.

Largely due to increased unemployment and increased bankruptcies, this portfolio is also experiencing rising delinquencies and losses.

Net credit losses were 10.37% in the fourth quarter, up 194 basis points over the third.

Now, loss rates have also been impacted by tightening in underwriting criteria resulting in a significant slowdown in the new loan production.

Like our other portfolios, California and Florida continue to have outsized delinquency and loss contributions in relation to the outstandings.

During the quarter we increased reserves on this portfolio by about $450 million to a level of around 12.3% of ending loans.

Switching to our commercial portfolios, net charge-offs increased $399 million in the quarter, to $1.36 billion, or 159 basis points, up 46 basis points from the third quarter.

The deterioration this quarter was broadly spread across various businesses, although on a semipositive note, small business had the smallest increase, i.e., about $35 million, we have seen in several quarters.

Net losses in small business, which are reported as commercial loan losses, increased to 11.5%.

If you exclude small business from commercial domestic, our total commercial loss rate is about 99 basis points.

Further excluding commercial real estate, where losses have been concentrated in home builders, the loss rate is 65 basis points.

As we have discussed before, many of the issues in small business relate to the rapid growth of the portfolio over the past few years which is now compounded by the current economic trends.

The continued increases are consistent with the seasoning of these vintages and while clearly too high, are generally in line with our forecast from last quarter.

Reservable criticized utilized exposure in our commercial book increased to 8.9% of the book from 7.45% at the end of the third quarter.

Now, the increase was scattered across industries, lines of businesses and products.

Commercial NPAs rose $1.7 billion to $6.8 billion.

Nearly 56% of the increase in commercial NPAs was in the commercial real estate business, spread across home builders, retail, and apartments.

Now, let me move off credit quality and discuss net interest income.

Compared to the third quarter on a managed and fully tax equivalent basis, net interest income was up $1.5 billion, of which core, which excludes our trading related margin, represented $994 million.

The increase in core NII was driven mainly by lower short end rates on market based funding and core deposit products.

The core net interest margin on a managed basis increased 16 basis points over third quarter to 3.95%, due primarily to the improved rate environment.

As you can see in our material, our interest rate positioning is now asset sensitive to parallel moves in rates, compared to our liability sensitive position at the end of September.

The change in sensitivity is primarily due to the changes in the forward curve as well as the absolute low level of rates.

Now, due to this low level of rates, some of our longer term assets are repricing faster while our shorter term liabilities have already or are unable to reprice much lower.

Now, given how low rates are, an asset sensitive position makes sense as we're positioned to benefit as rates rise in the future.

While we're asset sensitive to parallel moves in interest rates, we continue to benefit from curve steepening.

As a heads up, we expect net interest income to drop in the first quarter for seasonal reasons, as well as the negative impact of lower interest rates on our asset repricing.

Now, let me switch and talk about fourth quarter results for Merrill Lynch.

As Ken mentioned, Merrill Lynch's fourth quarter preliminary results total a $15.5 billion loss.

In our supplemental material, we've included a preliminary P&L and balance sheet.

Now, Merrill Lynch data we're providing today is preliminary, is a preliminary overview, as Merrill's ordinary and usual process for analyzing the numbers continues.

Now, once the results are fully complete, Merrill Lynch & Company will file a Form 10-K for 2008, so there will be more information in that report for you.

Now, before I take you through the details on the large items, let me say that the difficult capital markets environments, particularly the severe impact late in the fourth quarter, hit the Merrill Lynch platform very hard.

As asset prices continued to decline across all the categories, volatility and illiquidity spread throughout the markets and the correlation trades were really hit hard.

All this led to very disappointing results.

However, starting off on a positive note, global wealth management continued to deliver solid results despite the environment, with global private client net revenues down only 10% sequentially and even less in the US advisory portion of the business, a testament to the quality of the franchise.

Certain other businesses also performed relatively well, such as investment banking, down only 4% sequentially and commodities, which was up substantially on strength in trading gas and coal in Europe.

Now, in the fourth quarter, Merrill Lynch overall recorded negative revenues of $12.6 billion.

So let me take you through the principal drivers of those losses and the related remaining exposures.

Starting with the transitory leveraged lending exposures, charges totaled $1.9 billion during the quarter, driven by several credits under significant duress.

Remaining exposure in that transitory book totaled $5.6 billion, carried on average at $0.42 on the dollar or $2.4 billion on a market value basis.

The portfolio is comprised mainly of less liquid positions such as revolvers and bridge loans.

Now, of this total market value, about $1 billion is domestic and covered under the wrap.

Remaining commercial real estate exposure, excluding the First Republic portfolio is $9.7 billion.

Commercial real estate losses were $1.1 billion, of which $475 million related to whole loan conduits.

The remaining whole loan conduit exposure is $3.8 billion.

It's currently carried at $0.72 on the dollar, of which about $2 billion is covered under the wrap.

The remaining $600 million of losses were due to real estate related debt and equity investments involving smaller credits in EMEA and the Pac Rim.

The remaining exposure of these investments was $5.7 billion at the end of the year.

The US super senior ABS CDO losses were $369 million this quarter, and remaining unhedged exposure was $800 million.

It's carried at about $0.14 on the dollar.

The hedged long exposure is just over $1 billion, and it's carried at about $0.20 on the dollar.

Both of these are to be covered under the wrap.

Merrill Lynch experienced a loss of approximately $300 million on the financial guarantors covering the US super senior ABS CDOs.

The remaining receivable from guarantors on that portfolio is $1.5 billion, and this exposure is also covered under the wrap.

Regarding credit default swaps with monoline financial guarantors, excluding those that I just mentioned covering the US ABS CDOs, total notional was $50 billion with a mark-to-market before any adjustment for counterparty risk of $12.8 billion.

$7.8 billion after the counterparty risk adjustment.

Now, as part of Merrill Lynch's correlation trading and credit trading books, they've entered into various derivative contracts with monoline insurers to hedge risk in the portfolios.

Of the notional amount of the insurance of about $50 billion, one half relates to CLO and various high grade basket trades, and the other half relates primarily to CMBS and RMBS on which the underlying collateral varies from AAA to BBB.

To date, Merrill has taken credit valuation adjustments of approximately 39% on the receivable balance.

Now, both the remaining receivable balance as well as the remaining net notional are covered under the wrap.

CVA taken during the fourth quarter on these exposures totaled about $3 billion.

Merrill Lynch also recorded $1.2 billion in losses on their US banks investment portfolio during the quarter.

This portfolio had a year end market value of $10.4 billion, with $9.3 billion of cumulative loss adjustments recorded in OCI, reducing their shareholders' equity at year end.

As you know, OCI gets adjusted in purchase accounting so carrying or market value will be equal to our basis at acquisition.

Of the remaining market value, 95% is covered under the wrap.

Counterparty valuation costs on the derivatives book, other than the monolines that I've talked about just a minute ago, during the quarter were almost $2.5 billion.

This cost included approximately $800 million due to the narrowing of Merrill Lynch spreads due to the merger announcement, which would normally provide an offset but obviously in this case went the same direction.

There's about $17 billion of selected counterparty notional on derivatives, $3.2 billion of which is mark-to-market which is covered under the wrap that I've previously discussed.

Write-downs on private equity and principal investments totaled $1.7 billion, driven by valuation adjustments on private holdings and marks on the public holdings.

Other write-downs included $2.3 billion in goodwill impairment related to the fixed income and investment banking businesses.

Now, in addition to pressure on legacy exposures, the market dislocation and contagion caused many businesses to have very weak results, particularly credit, proprietary trading and principal investing.

As I mentioned earlier, while large write-downs occurred in the fourth quarter, we've limited the significant downside risk in these asset classes under the wrap.

Now, we'll provide more details on the Merrill Lynch exposures and what portion is covered under the wrap in future SEC filings.

And since we closed the acquisition of Merrill Lynch on January 1st, the results I just detailed are not reflected in our fourth quarter.

Integration efforts continue to move ahead and we remain confident in the long-term prospects of the combined Company.

So let me quickly cover some of the merger specifics.

We issued approximately $1.4 billion Bank of America shares at an exchange rate of 0.8595 for each Merrill share.

I'll give you some preliminary purchase accounting estimates but realize that they'll probably change somewhat as we're currently finalizing those.

From an accounting standpoint, under the revised purchase accounting guidelines, we'll mark Merrill Lynch's balance sheet to fair value levels as of January 1st.

As required under FAS 141R, the total purchase price for the transaction will be recorded for accounting purposes at the value as of the close, or $29.1 billion.

That includes the $20.5 billion in common shares, and the $8.6 billion in preferred equity.

Subtracting Merrill Lynch's estimated tangible book value adjusted for the impact of the preliminary purchase accounting of approximately $19.8 billion and $3.9 billion in identifiable intangibles net of tax results in goodwill of about $5.4 billion.

Other changes in purchase accounting adjustments from our prior disclosures include using the actual year-end number from Merrill Lynch's total shareholders' equity, which at $20.6 billion reflects the fourth quarter loss, and incorporating a write-down of Merrill Lynch's debt of $15.5 billion, reflecting fair value given Merrill Lynch's year end credit spread.

As you can see, total assets at Merrill Lynch at the end of December before purchase accounting marks were $663 billion, loans held for investment net of the allowance were $58 billion, and deposits were $98 billion.

Now, expect some shifting around of what's in the accrual book versus the market books as we move further down the path of consolidating operations and management.

You can see from the material, our updated restructuring costs of $3 billion pretax or $2 billion after tax is consistent with our initial estimates.

At this point, we expect to hit our targeted cost saves of $7 billion pretax, and it looks like we'll get more in 2009 than expected.

We originally indicated 20% to 25%, but now it looks like we could be north of 35%.

This will likewise accelerate our merger charges a little.

Now, under FAS 141R, the $2 billion of after tax restructuring charges will be recorded through the income statement as a restructuring expense through 2011.

The restructuring charge for 2009 is estimated to be approximately half of the total, spread somewhat evenly over the four quarters.

Given the size of the balance sheet, adding Merrill Lynch to Bank of America would reduce Bank of America's Tier 1 capital by approximately 45 basis points, 8.7% on a pro forma basis, which includes the $10 billion of preferred that funded January 9th, that was part of the initial TARP equity program.

Adding the incremental preferred issuance we announced this morning, plus the risk weighted asset adjustment due to the asset wrap, pro forma Tier 1 would be approximately 10.67%.

Estimated risk weighted assets from Merrill after purchase accounting adjustments are approximately $379 billion for your reference.

Adjusting for the wrap, combined risk weighted assets dropped by around $70 billion.

Now, as a reminder, we also strengthened Tier 1 somewhat two weeks ago with the sale of some of our investment in China Construction Bank, generating a pretax gain of approximately $2 billion.

Turning to tangible common as Ken mentioned earlier, we ended the quarter at 2.83%.

Now on a pro forma basis including Merrill Lynch and the other actions that ratio would be 2.66%.

And if you consider the same adjustments that Ken mentioned earlier related to higher quality debt securities and our restricted shares of CCB, you could add about another 30 basis points or so to the ratio so call it just under 3%.

Now, we're clearly comfortable running the Company at this level of Tier 1, realizing that an excess over what's appropriate in more normal times is needed and the tangible ratio, while adequate, will be rebuilt through earnings given the dividend action we announced this morning.

And while I'm not going to predict capital ratio levels at the end of March, we'll continue to be more efficient with the use of our balance sheet including the combined trading books of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch.

Now, from an earnings perspective, we believe Merrill Lynch on a GAAP basis will be dilutive to Bank of America's earnings over the next two years, due to what we believe will be below normal investment banking and trading environments.

And while we've not formally guaranteed the debt of Merrill Lynch, we clearly view it as supporting a critical part of our ongoing operations.

Before turning it back to Ken, let me say a couple of things about liquidity.

The Parent Company's liquidity remains strong with time to required funding at 23 months on a pro forma basis with Merrill Lynch.

It's actually 37 months before Merrill Lynch at the end of the year.

The additional actions today, meaning the TARP capital, will add an additional seven months to that for our Parent Company liquidity.

Also during the fourth quarter we raised nearly $20 billion of debt under the TLGP, primarily at the holding Company level, to ensure robust and excess liquidity and prepare for the Merrill Lynch merger.

Our primary bank, BANA, is running the highest levels of excess cash in the Company's history on a daily basis, and although somewhat inefficient from a margin perspective, it is prudent given the environment.

The positive inflows remain strong, and customers clearly prefer to keep cash in safe and liquid form.

This is one of the strongest aspects of our franchise and where we truly benefit from being the largest coast to coast financial institution.

With that, now let me turn it back to Ken.

Thanks, Joe.

Moving to 2009, let me reiterate that there is considerable uncertainty about the economic environment and the ongoing health of the consumer.

Due to that uncertainty, we won't go into the detail we have provided in the past as far as our expectations for 2009.

However, those banks with market presence and strong balance sheets can weather and even benefit from the situation and we do feel good about our relative position in our businesses versus the competition.

Making pro forma revenue comparisons between 2008 and 2009 is difficult, given the market disruption losses experienced by both companies in 2008.

However, we believe core net interest income would benefit given a favorable rate environment.

However, trading net interest income will drop given the targeted reduction in the trading books, and as was mentioned before, expect net interest income in the first quarter to be down due to seasonal impacts as well as lower pricing of assets, but then positive comparisons in each of the quarters thereafter.

Non-interest income will obviously grow, if you assume some stabilization in the markets, but I will let you hazard a guess on the health of global markets in 2009.

One area we do have control over is non-interest expense.

For 2009, we originally targeted approximately 20% of the $7 billion in cost saves from the Merrill integration and we now believe as Joe said, we can get closer to 35% or even north of 35%.

Additional cost saves from Countrywide and LaSalle should also have a positive impact on expense levels.

Consumer credit quality will continue as a headwind, due to what appears to be further deterioration in housing and unemployment levels, and their subsequent impact on consumer asset quality.

Similarly, we would expect to see challenges in the consumer dependent sectors of our commercial portfolios.

Given this scenario, for the next several quarters, we would expect net losses to be at or above levels we experienced in the fourth quarter.

While provision is dependant on future credit losses, everything we are seeing currently points to no relief in provision for at least the next several quarters.

Clearly, a real positive for us in 2009 would be for the trading environment to settle down.

Under that scenario, we can manage through the tough credit environment, which unfortunately, is with us for the next few quarters.

And with that, let me open it for questions.

Thank you, sir.

(Operator Instructions).

We'll take our first question from the site of Matthew O'Connor with UBS.

Your line is open.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning, Matt.

How should we think about all this non-common equity that you and other banks have?

At the end of the day, when you think about the line of defense against losses, it's common equity, loan loss reserves and preprovision earnings.

All these preferreds doesn't really address any of that.

In fact, the $3 billion that you paid out per year in dividends reduces the common equity.

So I can appreciate that it helps from a liquidity side which is already very strong at Bank of America but does it matter having 8.5% Tier 1 versus 10% Tier 1 when the common equity is still relatively low?

Matt, as I made in the comments, obviously Tier 1 is a critical measure and it's one that we clearly manage by because it gives you the composition of the asset mix much more specific to our institution.

Having said that, you've heard us say before, every ratio has its day in the sun, is critical at different points in the cycle and we clearly view the common equity ratio as something that needs to be focused on.

It is affected as I mentioned before, and Ken mentioned by certain other attributes that go into OCI and all and while we feel very comfortable that it's adequate at the level it is, that's one of the areas that we have a focus on to build and that was as I mentioned before why the dividend reduction will help rebuild that.

And obviously to rebuild the TCE, you can have organic earnings, you can shrink the balance sheet as you mentioned, capital raises as well on the common side.

But can you talk about how meaningful some of the balance sheet reductions might be as we think about 2009?

I can appreciate a lot of prepayment speeds are pretty low right now and it's tough to divest some of these assets but what are some of your expectations on how meaningful you can reduce the balance sheet?

Before Joe says it, just look at what the pro forma that most thought in terms of what the balance sheet would look like and it's probably $300 million, $300 billion, excuse me, $300 billion less than what you would have thought it would have been, and so that gives you kind of an idea of what you can do in a fairly short period of time and so I'll turn it over to Joe after that.

I think, Matt, a lot of the securities businesses I think still have opportunity, sizable opportunity because traditionally those businesses weren't necessarily focused on for aggregate gross balance sheet level given the matched books and some of the natural risk offsets, so you kind of managed on a net risk basis and it allowed some of the balance sheet to get bigger.

That was some of the areas that the team focused on coming into year end but it's clearly still got some opportunity and that doesn't really have a material impact on the business flow and the business activity.

So we think there are areas clearly like that that will help us.

Okay.

And then just separately, the Countrywide marks had been pretty aggressive at the time when the deal closed.

Any update on how you're feeling with those marks at this point?

Well, I don't know if you caught it.

I referred to in the comments and Kevin's got it in the back of the presentation a package that kind of shows you the -- let's call it the impaired loan pool performance.

We did update those marks.

We kind of reforecasted cash flow and we added about $750 million of additional marks to the impaired loan portfolio and that was focused principally in the pay option ARM product which is the one that we have always kind of viewed as some of the biggest downside risk in it.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you very much.

We can take our next question from the site of Nancy Bush with NAB Research LLC.

Your line is open.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Joe, could you just tell us, the $118 billion that's being back-stopped here, says it's, quote, primarily for Merrill Lynch.

Can you just split out what's from Merrill Lynch and what's from legacy BAC?

Don't hold me to this exactly, Nancy but think of it as 75% Merrill Lynch legacy assets and about 25% of similar types of assets off the Bank of America platform.

And I guess I'm -- I mean, is there something special about those or did you just decide to throw them in because of the risk factor or -- I'm trying to sort of separate out this TARP investment and what happened at BAC and what happened at legacy BAC to -- I mean, what happened at Merrill and what happened at legacy BAC to trigger this.

Let me give you a first response and then Ken may want to elaborate.

We were going through the process, we looked at what were -- first of all, what drove the losses on the Merrill Lynch platform during the fourth quarter, what were the remaining risk assets, that was the focus of the process.

There were certain assets that just fall out of the criteria for the wrap, based on the different agencies' criteria.

We then said, you know, a lot of the -- we had similar assets on the Bank of America platform and since you operationally manage some of this stuff together, it would not necessarily make sense to have overlapping positions in the same credit name, and so we reached across and said what are the similar Bank of America capital markets assets, and that's kind of the process that we went through to divide what would be ring-fenced.

Well said.

Ken, question for you and I think everybody is trying to grapple with this this morning.

What if anything was missed in due diligence of Merrill Lynch that brought us to this point?

If you could just elaborate on your view of that.

Yes, in a nutshell, much, much higher deterioration of the assets we had identified than we had expected, going into the fourth quarter.

So our forecast of losses, Merrill Lynch's forecast of losses and, frankly, I would think most anybody in the capital markets business would have forecasted a lower loss rate than what we saw, so it wasn't an issue of not identifying the assets.

It was that we did not expect the significant deterioration which happened in mid- to late December that we saw.

Okay.

And I guess the final question I would ask for you, Ken, would be, we know that these TARP investments are necessary right now to get us through this period.

But, I'm sure that you don't like your Company being called a ward of the state.

And much of the banking industry is coming to that.

But for BAC, when do you anticipate that you will be able to get out from under all these government, quote, investments?

Nancy, I wish I knew because I -- because then I would know what the economy was going to do over the next few years.

But clearly, as soon as possible, as to kind of reinforce your point.

But you can start -- if you just start looking at preprovision and normal capital markets, this Company will generate huge amounts of profit when we get a normal economic environment, not even a great one, just a normal one, and so it's almost directly correlated to how fast you think the economy will come back.

Okay.

Thank you.

We'll take our final question from the site of Mike Mayo with Deutsche Bank.

Your line is open.

Good morning.

Good morning, Mike.

Good morning.

What is pro forma tangible book value, I guess it's $11.44 at the end of the fourth quarter but including Merrill Lynch, what would that be?

Mike, I've been thinking about ratios so much.

Let me get Kevin to come back.

I'll come back.

Okay.

And in terms of -- just a follow-up to that last question, so were you able to walk away from the Merrill Lynch deal, I mean if it was so much worse as of mid-December, couldn't you say, hey, let's renegotiate or let's do something?

Well, let me just kind of take you through that.

It's a very legitimate question.

As we saw the anticipated fourth quarter losses accelerating, we did evaluate our rights under the merger agreement and during that time we spoke to and were in close coordination with officials from both the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.

The government was firmly of the view that terminating or delaying the closing of the transaction could lead to significant concerns and could result in serious systemic harm, and a repricing assuming it could be agreed would have a new stockholder vote both at Bank of America and at Merrill Lynch and therefore would have been delayed by at least a couple of months and that would have led to considerable uncertainty and could have well cost more than the repricing we would have saved.

And I think in recognition of the position that Bank of America was in, both the treasury and the Federal Reserve gave us assurances in December that we should close the deal and that the government would provide the assistance we've been talking about.

So particularly ringing -- putting a fence around some of the assets that we were most concerned about.

And so in view of all of those considerations, and in view that strategically, Merrill Lynch remains a solid franchise, we just thought it was in the best interest of our Company and our stockholders, and the country, to move forward with the original terms and the timing.

So what I think I hear is you're kind of helping out the country, doing a little bit of a favor, so why in turn is the Company put in some chains in terms of the executive compensation limits and it seems like the regulators got tougher on Bank of America as a whole, because you went out of your way to kind of make Merrill Lynch work.

Or am I misreading something here?

Well, I think you have to think about it in a broader perspective, that you can't -- that there are going to be issues with others, and there have been issues with others and we did think we were doing the right thing for the country, but at the same time, from the government's perspective, they've got to have some template and not have us be seen as played with favoritism.

Hey, Mike.

Kevin.

Just before you leave, the tangible book value including the Merrill Lynch shares is about just under $10, call it $9.93 or something like that.

Okay.

So it goes down by about $1.50 or so?

Right.

And actually, when do you -- do you think you'll be building up book value next quarter, all things considered, or -- I guess the question is do your preprovision, pretax profits help offset the credit losses or how do you think about that?

This is almost a facetious thing to say, but if I could annualize the first two weeks it would be building quite a bit.

But it's only been two weeks and you wouldn't know.

But yes, we would, but obviously we're subject to what happens in the economy.

All right.

Great.

I know the Citigroup call is starting soon, so thank you.

Thanks, Mike.

Thanks, everyone.

This does conclude today's teleconference.

Have a great day.

You may disconnect at any time.

Thank you for your participation.