On the 29th April 2009, at approximately 6pm, The Bank of America removed Kenneth D. Lewis as Chairman, and appointed Walter E. Massey as Chairman. While Lewis kept the title of President and Chief Executive, the person who once replaced Hugh McColl in 2001 was on the way out. By September 2009, Lewis had announced his retirement. Is this the beginning of the end for Hugh’s Dream?

What was Hugh McColl’s Dream?

The dream of Hugh McColl was a “super-regional” bank that stretched across the United States, combining regional banks into one powerful financial institution. Before his achievement, there had been no bank that had traded across the entire United States. The change occurred in part, because federal regulation had been relaxed which concerned banking, but mainly due to requirements to cut costs.

Having achieved a true nationwide, coast-to-coast bank in 1998 with the merger between NationsBank Corp. and BankAmerica Corp, the dream is looking to fall apart ten years later.

Hugh McColl’s History

Born in Bennettsville, South Carolina, Hugh McColl was born into a family full of bankers. Both his father and grandfather ran banks, and it seemed like it was that family history, not a special interest, that led him into banking. H

After a two-year military career, McColl was steered into becoming a trainee at the American Commercial Bank in Charlotte. From there, McColl rose quickly through the ranks, becoming president of the renamed North Carolina National Bank (NCNB) in just 13 short years. In 1982, he was named CEO of NCNB and set out on his ambitious mission to build the USA’s first truly national bank. Over the next 16 years, through a series of acquisitions and mergers, McColl was able to build a global banking powerhouse.

McColl was known for his systems and process-oriented approach, as well as his big dreams and even bigger temper. He was determined to chart a different path than the one his father had taken, and his mission of conquest and acquisition saw the acquisition of MBNA in Baltimore, St. Louis’ Boatman Bancshares, Barnett Bank of Florida, Dallas’ 1st Republic, C&S/Sovran, and The First National Bank of Boston. 

By 1998, his empire had grown to a massive $570 billion dollar asset institution with almost 5,000 branch offices in 22 states. However, the acquisitions of New York Trust, Countrywide Financial, and Merrill Lynch pushed the company into too big to fail territory, and by the time McColl retired in 2001, the company had grown to almost $3 trillion dollars in asset size. 

Conclusion

Despite the success of his mission, the banking giant eventually teetered on the brink of collapse and became the poster child for banking excess, greed, and stupidity in creating the current economic crisis. The company was eventually bailed out with $50 billion dollars in taxpayer funds, but it was not enough to keep all 171,587 employees employed.