Companies Owned by Bank of America (2026)

Is Bank of America incorporated in Delaware?

Yes — and the detail matters more than it first appears. The publicly traded parent, Bank of America Corporation, is a Delaware corporation. You can confirm it in the company’s own SEC filings, which the regulator indexes under the issuer name “BANK OF AMERICA CORP /DE/.” That “/DE/” tag is the SEC’s shorthand for the state of incorporation, and it sits on top of one of the largest financial groups in the United States.

The bank you walk into, or log into, is a different legal person: Bank of America, N.A., a nationally chartered bank. The Delaware corporation is the holding company that owns it. This split — a Delaware parent on top of an operating subsidiary — is the single most common pattern among large US companies, and it is exactly the structural idea a founder borrows, in miniature, when forming a Delaware LLC to hold a business.

Why Delaware for the parent? Predictability. Delaware has the most developed body of corporate case law in the country and a dedicated business court, the Court of Chancery, that hears disputes without a jury. For a company whose shares trade publicly and whose governance is scrutinised constantly, that predictability is worth a great deal. The same predictability is part of why so many smaller founders default to Delaware too, which we unpack on our Delaware LLC formation guide.

It is worth being precise about what “incorporated in Delaware” does and does not mean, because the phrase confuses people. It does not mean a company has its headquarters or its main offices in Delaware — Bank of America’s corporate headquarters are in Charlotte, North Carolina. It means the company chose Delaware as the legal jurisdiction whose law governs the entity’s internal affairs: how directors are elected, how shareholders vote, how disputes among owners are resolved. A business can be incorporated in Delaware and operate everywhere else, and the overwhelming majority of large US public companies do exactly that. A founder forming a Delaware LLC follows the identical logic — they pick Delaware for the legal framework, then run the business from wherever they happen to live, including outside the United States entirely.

What is the corporate structure underneath Bank of America?

A useful way to read any large group is in layers: the publicly traded parent at the top, one or more intermediate holding companies in the middle, and the operating businesses at the bottom. Bank of America follows that shape. The Delaware parent issues the common stock that trades under the ticker BAC. Beneath it sits NB Holdings Corporation, a Delaware company registered in Wilmington that the group’s own filings describe as an intermediate holding company directly or indirectly owning the material operating entities — and beneath that sit the banks, broker-dealers, and trust companies that actually serve customers.

That layered design lets a group separate liabilities, ring-fence regulated entities, and move capital between subsidiaries without disturbing the parent’s public stock. A single-member Delaware LLC obviously does not need intermediate holding companies, but the underlying instinct is identical: keep the legal entity that owns the business distinct from the people who own the entity. That separation is the entire point of a limited liability company, and it is why founders form one before they have any subsidiaries at all.

There is a second reason the layering matters, and it transfers directly to small operators. A holding structure lets a group quarantine risk. If one subsidiary faces a lawsuit or a regulatory problem, the structure is designed so that the trouble stays, as far as the law allows, with that subsidiary rather than spreading to the parent and the other businesses. A founder cannot replicate a multi-entity bank, but they can replicate the first move: put the business inside an LLC so that a claim against the business is, in principle, a claim against the company’s assets rather than the owner’s personal savings, home, or other property. That protection is never automatic — it depends on keeping the company genuinely separate, with its own bank account and clean records — but the structural idea a global bank relies on is the same one available to a one-person Delaware LLC on day one. This is general information, not legal advice; confirm your own protection with a qualified attorney.

Does Bank of America own Merrill Lynch and Merrill?

Yes. Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynchin an all-stock deal announced in 2008 during the financial crisis, and the wealth-management business has been a wholly owned part of the group ever since. The brand has changed shape over the years — in 2019 the company simplified the consumer-facing name from “Merrill Lynch” to simply Merrill — but the ownership did not change. Merrill is Bank of America.

Under the surface, the legal entity that powers the brokerage is Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, one of the group’s principal broker-dealers. The famous bull logo stayed; the “Lynch” in everyday branding largely went. If you hold a Merrill brokerage account or work with a Merrill advisor, the counterparty is a Bank of America subsidiary. This is the same brand-versus-entity distinction a small founder learns: the trading name customers see is not always the registered company name on the paperwork.

The Merrill story is also a clean example of how acquisitions reshape a group’s brand map. Before 2008, Merrill Lynch was an independent public company with its own century-old identity. After the acquisition it became a subsidiary, then a division, then a simplified brand. None of those steps changed who ultimately owned it — Bank of America did throughout — but each one changed what the public called it. When you research ownership of any large group, this is the trap to avoid: a familiar name surviving in the market does not tell you who owns the entity behind it, and a name disappearing does not mean the business was sold. Only the corporate records do. The same care pays off at founder scale when you decide whether your LLC will trade under its registered name or under a separate “doing business as” brand.

What is BofA Securities, and is it owned by Bank of America?

BofA Securities, Inc.is the group’s principal U.S. broker-dealer for investment banking, capital markets, and institutional trading. The parent’s 10-K Exhibit 21 — the official list of subsidiaries every public company files with the SEC — shows it as a Delaware entity based in New York, wholly owned by Bank of America. It is essentially the old Merrill Lynch investment bank operating under a renamed entity after the 2019 rebrand. When a merger press release lists “BofA Securities” as an adviser, or a research note carries that name, you are reading the Bank of America group acting through this subsidiary.

The group has also operated other broker-dealer entities — for example, Merrill Lynch Professional Clearing Corp., a clearing broker-dealer named in its filings. The takeaway is that one customer-facing giant can be made of several distinct registered companies, each licensed for a particular role. A founder’s single Delaware LLC compresses all of that into one entity, which is exactly why it is such an efficient starting point — you do not need a corporate group to get the liability separation; you need one properly formed company. The detail of getting a US federal tax ID for that single entity is covered on our EIN for a Delaware LLC guide.

Does Bank of America own U.S. Trust and a private bank?

This one is directly relevant to Delaware. U.S. Trust Company of Delawareis a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bank of America group, headquartered in Wilmington — the heart of Delaware’s trust and corporate-services industry. In 2019 Bank of America retired the consumer-facing “U.S. Trust” brand and folded that ultra-high-net-worth private-banking business into Bank of America Private Bank. The brand changed; the Delaware trust entity remained part of the group.

It is no accident that a major financial group keeps a trust company chartered in Delaware. The state is a long-standing home for trusts, holding entities, and special-purpose vehicles because its law is settled and its courts are experienced. That is the same gravitational pull that brings non-resident founders to form a Delaware entity for their own, far smaller, holding or operating needs — explored further on our Delaware LLC for non-residents page.

The U.S. Trust example also illustrates a subtlety that catches researchers out: a single brand can correspond to more than one legal entity. “U.S. Trust” historically referred to a family of trust companies, and the Delaware-chartered piece, U.S. Trust Company of Delaware, was just one of them. When you try to answer “does Bank of America own X,” the most reliable approach is to look for the specific registered entity rather than the marketing umbrella. For founders, the practical lesson is the inverse and reassuring one: a single Delaware LLC can comfortably carry one public-facing brand, or several, without needing a separate company for each.

What did Bank of America acquire to build the group it owns today?

Much of what Bank of America owns arrived through acquisition rather than internal launch, and that history explains some brand confusion. In 2006 the group acquired the credit-card company MBNA, a Wilmington, Delaware company, and integrated its card business into Bank of America. In 2008 it acquired Countrywide Financial, whose mortgage operations became the core of Bank of America Home Loans; the Countrywide brand was retired, but the mortgage assets and servicing stayed inside the group. The same year brought the Merrill Lynch deal described above.

These deals show how a holding company grows: it buys an operating business, places it in the corporate tree, and often retires or rebrands the acquired name over time. The legal wrapper outlives the brand. It is also worth noting that an acquisition does not always mean the group keeps everything it inherits — the Countrywide deal brought in Balboa Insurance, which Bank of America later sold to Australia’s QBE in 2011. Ownership is a moving target in both directions. For a founder, the parallel is gentler but real: your Delaware LLC can acquire a domain, a product, a book of customers, or another small business and hold them all under one roof, which is why the operating agreement that records who owns what is worth getting right from day one.

Which brands are confused as owned by Bank of America but are NOT?

Because Bank of America is so large and so old, several well-known names get wrongly attributed to it. Getting these right matters, because the point of this page is accurate ownership, not a grab-bag of finance brands.

When you research who owns whom, this is the discipline that protects you: confirm the ownership in a primary source — an SEC filing, an official company statement — rather than assuming that two firms in the same industry must be related. It is the same caution we ask founders to apply when they read a confident claim about Delaware tax or filing deadlines: check the source before relying on it.

The Balboa Insurance example is a particularly clean illustration of why a point-in-time answer can be wrong. There was a window when Bank of America did own Balboa, having inherited it through the Countrywide acquisition. A source written in that window would have listed Balboa as a Bank of America company and been correct. After the 2011 sale to QBE, that same statement became false. Ownership is a moving target, and the only durable way to track it is through current filings rather than an article that may be years old. We make the same point about compliance facts on this site: a Delaware deadline or a federal reporting rule that was accurate two years ago may have changed, which is exactly why we hedge anything time-sensitive and point you to the primary source.

How does the Bank of America structure compare to a founder’s Delaware LLC?

The honest comparison is one of scale and entity type, not of legal availability. A multinational uses a Delaware corporation as its public parent and stacks regulated subsidiaries beneath it. A solo founder uses a single Delaware LLC. Both rely on Delaware’s general entity law and its courts; the difference is how many layers you need.

The row that trips people up is the franchise-tax row. A Delaware corporation calculates franchise tax with the authorized-shares method or the assumed-par-value method — share-based formulas that can run into large numbers. A Delaware LLC does none of that: it pays a flat $300 a year, full stop. If you are weighing the two entity types, our Delaware C-Corp guide and our Delaware franchise tax explainer lay out the difference so you do not accidentally apply a corporate formula to an LLC.

There is one more reason the comparison is instructive rather than discouraging. Bank of America chose a corporation because it needed to issue public stock, satisfy banking regulators, and accommodate millions of shareholders. Almost none of that applies to a founder shipping a product or offering a service. For that founder, the LLC is usually the better fit precisely because it strips away the machinery a public corporation needs: no board elections, no share classes, no annual report to the state, and a flat tax that never depends on how the business is doing. You get the same Delaware legal home the giant uses, without inheriting the obligations that only make sense at the giant’s scale. If your plan is to raise venture capital later, a corporation may eventually become the right structure — but that is a deliberate, later choice, not a default you should adopt just because a large company did.

What does it actually cost a founder to form and run a Delaware LLC?

You do not need a holding-company budget to use Delaware. Our service is a single flat fee of $397, and the Delaware state filing fee is already included — there is no separate state charge bolted on at checkout. That covers the Certificate of Formation, the EIN application, a Delaware registered agent for year one, your operating agreement, and US bank and Stripe application support.

From year two, the entire state obligation for an LLC is the flat $300 franchise tax, due June 1. There is no Delaware annual report for an LLC. Miss the deadline and Delaware adds a $200 penalty plus 1.5% interest per month, and the entity loses good standing — which is precisely why we track the date for you. The full breakdown lives on our Delaware LLC cost page, with the tax mechanics in our Delaware LLC taxes overview.

The contrast with a corporation is worth stating plainly, because it is where most cost confusion comes from. A Delaware corporation’s franchise tax is calculated, not flat, and the figure depends on how many shares it has authorised and on its assumed par value — the same share-based math a public company like Bank of America’s parent works through, and it can produce a substantial bill. An LLC sidesteps all of that. Whatever your revenue, whatever your membership, the number is $300 a year. That predictability is one of the quiet reasons the LLC is the default for solo founders and small teams: your state cost in year five is the same line item it was in year two, and you never have to model a tax that scales with your paperwork. The only thing that changes the number is missing the deadline, which is the one outcome the service exists to prevent.

How does a non-resident founder set up the same Delaware vehicle?

The process is built for founders who live outside the United States. There is no requirement for a US Social Security Number, a visa, or a US address to form a Delaware LLC. After we file the Certificate of Formation — completed in about 48 hours — we apply for your EIN using Form SS-4. For applicants without an SSN, the IRS processes that by fax or mail, so it takes roughly 2 to 4 weeks rather than minutes.

With the EIN issued, you can open US business banking — most applications are decided within 1 to 5 business days, though approval is always the bank’s decision, never a guarantee. The same is true for Stripe: whether an account is approved is the provider’s call, and we help you present a clean, consistent application. The whole sequence is laid out step by step on our how it works page.

A realistic picture helps here. Imagine a founder living outside the United States who wants a single, recognised US entity to hold a software product and the revenue it earns. They form a Delaware LLC under the product’s name, receive the Certificate of Formation in about two days, and apply for the EIN while they finish building. A few weeks later the EIN arrives, the founder opens US business banking in the company’s name, and connects a payment processor so customers worldwide can pay into the entity. Year one cost is the flat $397. From then on the founder budgets the flat $300 franchise tax each June 1 and files the federal forms below. It is, in miniature, the same instinct that puts a Delaware holding company on top of a bank: one clean legal home for the business, in a jurisdiction whose rules are known.

What federal filings come with a foreign-owned Delaware LLC?

One filing matters most for non-resident owners. If a non-US person owns 25% or more of a single-member Delaware LLC treated as a disregarded entity, the IRS requires Form 5472 each year, attached to a pro-forma Form 1120. It reports reportable transactions between you and your LLC — including the capital you contribute. The penalty for failing to file is $25,000 under IRC 6038A, so most owners treat it as mandatory. It is due April 15 and can be extended with Form 7004. The detail is on our Form 5472 for Delaware LLCs guide.

Beneficial-ownership reporting under the Corporate Transparency Act has also been in flux. A FinCEN interim final rule issued in March 2025 removed BOI reporting obligations for US-formed domestic reporting companies, so under that rule US-formed entities are currently exempt while certain foreign reporting companies remain in scope. Because this area is still evolving, confirm the current FinCEN position before relying on any summary rather than treating a fixed deadline as settled. And if you sell online, note that the third-party 1099-K reporting threshold is more than $20,000 and more than 200 transactions after the 2025 change that repealed the lower figure — the kind of specific number worth verifying against the IRS directly.

Many of these companies chose Delaware for the same reasons founders do today — the Court of Chancery, flexible LLC statutes, and strong privacy protections. Form your Delaware LLC for $397, all-inclusive, in 48 hours. Form your Delaware LLC → | Read the complete Delaware LLC guide →