June 11 2008,


Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis, who vowed to scale back the company's investment bank last year after profit evaporated, affirmed his commitment to the unit and said this quarter may be among its most profitable.

``I feel so much better now about our investment bank than I did, say, a few weeks ago, a few months ago,'' Lewis said at a New York conference today. The current quarter could be ``one of the three or four best investment-banking quarters that we've had,'' he said.

That's a change in tone from last October, when Lewis said he'd had ``all the fun I can stand'' in investment banking as the unit posted a 93 percent plunge in third-quarter profit. Lewis has since said he regrets the comment, adding today that clients began to doubt the bank was committed to the business.

``We've narrowed down the focus on what we're really good at,'' Lewis, 61, said at a session sponsored by the Wall Street Journal.

Bank of America is taking advantage of the worldwide credit crunch to hire bankers from faltering rivals, said Brian Brille, global head of investment banking, in a June 9 interview. Eight executives were recruited to the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company from Bear Stearns Cos. and Morgan Stanley in the past six weeks, including David Glaser, co-head of investment banking at Bear Stearns, Brille said.

The new bankers, who specialize in media, technology, financial and health care, join Bank of America after the world's biggest financial companies including Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., UBS AG and Citigroup Inc. dismissed more than 83,000 people.

Bear-Market Hires

``It's harder to acquire this sort of talent during periods of bull markets,'' said Brille, 47, who joined Bank of America from Morgan Stanley in 1999.

Glaser, 51, who will become chairman of global mergers and acquisitions, spent 23 years at Bear Stearns before JPMorgan Chase & Co. rescued the firm last month with a $1.36 billion acquisition. He will report to Stefan Selig, vice chairman of the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank's investment bank. Brille reports to Brian Moynihan, president of Bank of America's global corporate and investment bank.

``It confirms they are dedicated to building up a real Class-A team, augmenting what they already have,'' said Marc Jaffe, a partner at New York law firm Latham & Watkins LLP, who has worked with Glaser on transactions.

The bank picked up unsolicited business after the collapse of Bear Stearns, Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Meredith Whitney wrote in a report following a meeting with Lewis yesterday.

``Bank of America sees itself gaining market share in the areas it chooses to compete, particularly through existing clients,'' Whitney said.

Change of Heart

Building the unit wasn't what Lewis had in mind last October, when he rejected a suggestion from Deutsche Bank AG analyst Michael Mayo that the bank form a joint venture or make an acquisition to gain people with more investment banking experience.

``To get bigger is not something I really want to do,'' he said, pledging to weed out units that post four or five annual profits ``and then give it all back in one year.'' Lewis ousted Gene Taylor as head of the subsidiary and cut about a fifth of its 5,900 employees.

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Mission.. trade my way till I get a job at Goldman Sachs New York!