Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) Weighed Down by Countrywide Acquisition

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) continues to be held back by their acquisition of Countrywide, which brought with it huge exposure to the home loan market. That has resulted in another quarterly loss for the financial giant, which lost $1.2 billion for the quarter.

Bad home loans were by far the major loss for the bank in the reporting period. The loss was driven by a $2 billion writedown related to its mortgage business.

Without the writedown, Bank of America would have posted earnings in the fourth quarter of $756 million, or 4 cents a share, still 10 cents below expectations.

Commenting on the quarter and overall year, CEO Brian Moynihan said, "Last year was a necessary repair and rebuilding year."

The idea was to attempt to start off 2011 with much of the problem cleaned from the books. It remains to be seen whether they've been successful or not in that endeavor.

Revenue for the quarter was $22.4 billion, falling from $25.1 billion in the prior year.

Bank of America was trading at $14.36, down $0.18, or 1.24 percent, as of 11:31 AM EST.