Richard Bove, an analyst with Rochdale Securities, said yesterday that Bank of America has sufficient capital. The company has "so much cash on its balance sheet that it could pay back all of its short-term debt and a big chunk of its long- term debt," he said.
Henry Blodget, the former Internet stock analyst turned blogger, wrote yesterday on Business Insider that charges and loan costs may force the bank to raise as much as $200 billion. Bank of America said Blodget, who was banned for life from the securities industry after regulatory inquiries into how analysts touted stocks during the Internet boom, made "exaggerated and unwarranted claims." The claims are "just wrong," according to yesterday's employee memo.
Bank of America is going to focus on cutting expenses to manage through a "protracted economic recovery," Moynihan told investors this month. The economy grew at a 1.3 percent annual pace in the second quarter.
Moynihan plans to "continue to clean up the mortgage issues" stemming from the 2008 takeover of Countrywide Financial Corp. and "get our operating costs down across the board," he said this month.