The troubles of financial giant BankAmerica were hardly a secret. A red tide of loan losses has swelled over the past four years, and Chairman Samuel Armacost last month forecast little or no profit for the second quarter. Still, the financial community was stunned when BankAmerica last week announced a net loss of $338 million for that period. It was the second-worst quarterly deficit in U.S. banking history (after Continental Illinois' $1.1 billion loss in the second quarter of 1984).
As recently as 1979, California's BankAmerica was the world's largest and most profitable financial...
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