Bank of America 2015 Annual Report Download - page 8

We offer these clients our expertise backed by your award-
winning Global Research team, which has been ranked
No.  in the world by Institutional Investor magazine for
five consecutive years.
With competitors exiting parts of this business and capital
markets and trading revenue down industrywide, the question
is posed: why have a markets business? We have it first and
foremost because our clients need our help to raise capital. In
addition, our investors need to find opportunities to put their
capital to work.
The key then is to have a sales and trading and capital markets
business that focuses on those missions and avoids the
proprietary activities that got the industry in trouble in the last
crisis. We have reshaped this business to do that. It is balanced
and its narrower scope of activities enables it to weather market
volatility well. Having those capabilities inside of a large, well-
capitalized, diverse company like ours also is safer for our clients.
And, because of our relative position in the business, serving
clients in the largest fee pools in the world, we are able to
operate the business quite profitably. In all of , there were
only four days when our trading business was not profitable.
The fact remains there are only a handful of banks around the
world that can handle the global needs of corporate clients,
and your bank is one of those.
So, this business is key to our customers, its risk has been
reduced, and it makes money in almost all circumstances,
helping our clients raise funds to grow and prosper. And our
investor clients make money for their investors, the savers
of America, by showing them the trends in the markets and
providing access to the companies that are issuing debt or
equity. This relationship between companies and investors that
we help create is key to making American and global capitalism
work and growing the real economy.
As we look across our businesses and the clients they serve,
we have a leading set of capabilities in every area where we
operate. That is the power of your company; that is the strength
of the model and the balance we are striking to ensure we are
doing all we can for our customers and clients, while optimizing
our balance sheet to perform efficiently with the post-crisis
regulations we must follow.
We must grow with our customer-focused strategy
We have a simple goal. We need to do more with our customers
by bringing them everything they need to live their financial
lives. I am often asked, “Why don’t you just go out and buy
loans and grow faster?” We won’t do that because we want to
save our balance sheet, as strong and big as it is, to serve our
customers and clients, the relationships we work so hard to
develop. In addition, one of the lessons we learned during the
Over the past four years,
we have raised nearly
$. trillion in capital for
corporate and institutional
clients around the world,
helping these clients
expand their businesses
and invest in the future.
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