Bank of America is one of the world 's largest financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle sized market businesses and large corporations with a vast array of products and services. From multi-million dollar loans to thousands of ATM’s throughout the United States and overseas, Bank of America is among the world 's leading wealth management companies’ and is a global leader in corporate business. Bank of America Business Capital provides asset-based credit facilities of $10 million or more throughout the United States, Canada and Europe for manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, and service businesses. Bank of America is currently listed as number 5 on the Fortune Global 500 annual ranking of America’s largest corporations. However, they did not place within the top 100 of fortune 500 companies to work for in 2009 (CNN.com money magazine, 2009).
Bank of America operates in more than 10 countries including regions in Europe, Asia, and Central and South America. With operations in such a wide range of selected countries Bank of America (BOA) has to deal with differing legal and cultural aspects which can relate to the amount of risk the management is willing to accept. This risk includes what is called systematic political risk. “As a rule, a country’s political processes do not treat foreign operations unfairly. If they did, few companies would hazard the investment” (Daniels et. al, p. 105, 2011).
The differing market and legal systems, ranging from common law to theocratic law and a mixed system, etc could make room for trouble for BOA’s international business if the interpretation of the laws are not the same.
Similarly, economic risk is the likelihood that certain events or changes in the economic status or a company or will cause drastic changes adversely affecting profits and other goals. The ability to measure and understand risk and determining which risk is acceptable is a
References: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2009/full_list/index.html http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2010/full_list/index.html http://corp.bankofamerica.com/public/public.portal?_pd_page_label=products/abf/products Daniels, J., Radebaugh, L., & Sullivan, D. (2011). International Business. Environments & Operations. (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. http://corp.bankofamerica.com/publicpdf/products/abf/CFOOutlook2011_execsummary.pdf http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/71/71595/reports/2009_AR.pdf