Chairman,
Chief Executive Officer
and President
We understand that only by creating opportunities for our customers and clients do we create opportunities for ourselves. Bank of America customers and clients know they can count on us to anticipate their needs, and create the opportunities that enable them to achieve their goals.
2006 was another demonstration of the many paths to growth available to your company, and our proven ability to drive growth through the competitive advantages Bank of America brings to the marketplace.
Our ability to innovate, integrate and execute to serve customers' needs enabled us to grow our customer relationships last year. At the same time, our associates again demonstrated that few of our peers are as efficient, effective or profitable at integrating acquisitions to enhance shareholder value.
Our efforts were recognized by investors, as our shares appreciated 16 percent during the year, exceeding the performance of the S&P 500 Index.
Bank of America today is one of the largest companies in the world; we were the fifth most profitable company in 2006 with a net profit of more than $21 billion. But while we have built leading positions in many customer segments and product lines in banking, our market penetration is actually small, given our potential, in a number of areas, such as first mortgage lending, small business lending, capital markets and wealth management.
These and other areas of opportunity are discussed in this annual report. Our new marketing platform, Bank of Opportunity™, reflects our vision for Bank of America as a catalyst to create opportunities for all of our constituencies, from customers and associates to communities and shareholders.
We are building a financial services company that offers the most convenient banking network for our retail customers coast-to-coast and a global capital markets platform to serve our corporate and institutional clients.
We are building a company that consistently leverages information and market knowledge to innovate for customers and clients; that knows how to integrate its operations and businesses to create greater value for customers and shareholders alike; and that delivers the highest standard of service quality to consumers, businesses and institutions of all sizes.
In sum, we are building a financial services company that people and organizations throughout the United States and around the world instinctively seek out to help them create, build, preserve and grow the wealth they need to seize their opportunities, achieve their goals and realize their dreams.
In this letter, I will discuss some of our strategies for fulfilling this vision, and I encourage you to review the articles that follow, in which we connect opportunities created for customers to value created for shareholders. First, though, I'd like to review some of our financial results from 2006.
Next: Strong financial performance yet again.
1. To Our Shareholders