Nearly two years ago to the day, Bank of America announced it had resolved “substantial legacy issues” with respect to Countrywide Financial home mortgages it sold on to groups including Fannie Mae.
At the time, the roughly $1.5bn settlement was cheered by investors and analysts, who thought it eliminated mounting uncertainty regarding BofA’s exposure to potential claims arising from losses on home loans. BofA shares closed up more than 6 per cent on January 3 2011 compared with the previous day.
But that optimism was short lived. Since then, the bank has been hit by tens of billions of dollars in additional mortgage-related costs, lawsuits, settlements and demands to repurchase soured loans it sold to third parties. Investor concerns increased in line with the rise in repurchase requests.