Beneath that healthy exterior

Signs are emerging that America’s banks are heading for trouble

Jul 27th 2000|

“BANK OF AMERICA has the potential to become too big to fail in the next recession,” says Charles Peabody, a famously outspoken banking analyst from Mitchell Securities, speaking of America's biggest bank. B of A is not the only target of his opprobrium: he likes very few banks. Michael Mayo, an analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB), goes further: he spurns them all. Not a single bank does he recommend to investors. And this in an industry where fewer than one per cent of analysts' recommendations are “sell”. Clearly, something is wrong.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Beneath that healthy exterior”