BOA's Tier 1 capital climbed 32.8% during the course of 2009 from $121bn to $160bn. This compares with a drop of 2.3% in Tier 1 capital for JPMorgan Chase.
As the dust of the financial crisis settled last year and the US's biggest banks started to pay off their debts from the federal government's Troubled Asset Relief Programme, a new atmosphere began to pervade the sector.
