Why Bank of America Corp (BAC) Is Lagging Today: Citigroup Inc. (C), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)

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Last year, the bank didn’t even seek approval for an increased capital distribution. Its decision not to do so stemmed presumably from having its 2011 request humiliatingly denied. The incident made Moynihan seem out-of-touch with reality and seemingly led to the ouster of Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC)’s then chief financial officer, Chuck Noski. “It happened because we hadn’t fully integrated the risk systems of Merrill Lynch and B of A,” he told Fortune‘s Shawn Tully four months later.

Will it be able to take a step in this direction on Thursday? I believe it will for the simple reason that it now has more than enough capital to justify such a move, and it’s made significant progress in cleaning up its legal liability — though much on the latter front still remains as I discussed in this comprehensive analysis of B of A’s legal woes. For the time being, however, as we can see in B of A’s shares today, there’s bound to be considerable speculation among investors and traders.

The article Why Bank of America Is Lagging Today originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by John Maxfield.

John Maxfield owns shares of Bank of America. The Motley Fool owns shares of Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase.

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