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NEW YORK, US: Mr Kenneth Lewis' seven-year tenure at the helm of Bank of America (BoA) has been marked by big, audacious, complicated acquisitions.
Buying Merrill Lynch may top them all.
'This was the strategic opportunity of a lifetime,' Mr Lewis told reporters.
The US$50 billion (S$71 billion) all-stock acquisition followed less than two days of negotiations, which sprung from the banking industry's efforts to address problems affecting Lehman Brothers.
Buying Merrill cements Mr Lewis' reputation as one of the most aggressive acquirers in corporate history, with more than US$150 billion of acquisitions.
In that sense, the 61-year-old executive has proven a worthy successor to Mr Hugh McColl. Acquisitions engineered by Mr McColl, known as 'Huge' for his deal-making, included the US$43.1 billion purchase in 1998 of BankAmerica by his NationsBank, which created BoA.
'The Merrill acquisition meets three of Mr Ken Lewis' key requirements for acquisitions: brand, scale and best-in-class franchise,' wrote Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitney.
BoA was already the nation's biggest retail bank, credit card issuer, home equity loan provider and - after buying Countrywide Financial in July - mortgage provider. Adding Merrill will make the bank the largest US brokerage, with more than 20,000 financial advisers and US$2.5 trillion of client assets.
It will also give BoA a far bigger investment bank, less than a year after trading losses led Mr Lewis to say he had had 'all of the fun I can stand in investment banking'. He later said he regretted that comment because it raised a question about his commitment to the business.
But with the addition of Merrill, 'I actually do like the business at this scale', he said on Monday.
The purchase came just 11 weeks after Mr Lewis paid US$2.5 billion for Countrywide.
Arguably, the Merrill purchase could also bolster his reputation as someone like a saviour for the financial system - though in buying Merrill, he spurned Lehman.
Mr Lewis, born on April 9, 1947, in Mississippi, obtained his finance degree from Georgia State University and joined BoA predecessor NCNB in 1969 as a credit analyst.
He became BoA's CEO in April 2001, and 21/2 years later, announced his first purchase, shelling out US$48 billion for north-east regional bank FleetBoston Financial. Nearly everyone thought he overpaid. Yet that purchase, which closed in April 2004, is now considered a success.
The next big merger came in June 2005, when he agreed to buy credit-card issuer MBNA in a US$34.6 billion deal. The year 2007 brought the US$3.3 billion purchase in July of the US Trust private banking unit from Charles Schwab, and the US$21 billion purchase of LaSalle Bank three months later from Holland's ABN Amro.
Mr Lewis' activities have not fully translated into rewards for shareholders.
While the bank's market value is well above the US$88 billion level it had when Mr Lewis took over, it has fallen in recent months along with those of other banking companies, ending Friday at US$154 billion. They fell further on Monday.
REUTERS
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