In a doomsday scenario, Bank of America Corp. might dismantle some units, turn others over to regulators and transfer certain assets to a temporary bank that would ultimately emerge from the meltdown, it said in a plan released Tuesday.
The Charlotte bank was one of nine top lenders to submit the so-called “living wills,” blueprints for how banks with $50 billion or more in assets might be unwound should they near failure. The exercise, mandated as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, is meant to show such banks aren’t “too big to fail” – and that taxpayers wouldn’t be on the hook for rescuing troubled institutions.
Yet critics say the reports amount to little more than a hypothetical game plan and wouldn’t do much to avert the turmoil that followed the 2008 financial crisis in the event of another catastrophe.