B of A Pushes to Sell More of Its Services To Midsize Companies

BankAmerica Corp. has begun a campaign to sell more banking services to midsize companies in areas where it doesn't have branches or offices.

Midsize companies, which the bank defines as those with revenues of $50 million to $250 million, normally use only local banks.

But BankAmerica says they are now asking for services local banks can't provide - such as access to an international network, private placements, or sophisticated risk management and foreign exchange services. BankAmerica is a leader among American banks in each of these services.

Bankers and businessmen are also getting more comfortable working with each other by computer or by telephone, BankAmerica says.

As a result, the big San Francisco-based bank believes it has a substantial opportunity to expand its dealings with midsize companies located outside its home markets.

To get that business, the bank has set up a task force in Chicago, where it bought Continental Bank Corp. last year. Bank of America Illinois, as the acquired company is now called, has increased by about a third the number of bankers it has calling on midsize prospects in midwestern states outside Illinois.

Nearly all of these bankers are based in Chicago. But they are drumming up business in seven other states - Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio.

Marcus W. Acheson, executive vice president of Bank of America Illinois, who heads the Chicago bank's middle-market banking division, said his group was also preparing to start marketing banking services to midsize companies throughout the Southeast from an office in Atlanta.

BankAmerica, Mr. Acheson said, intends to transform its middle-market banking business into something approaching a national operation. Indeed, the Northeast is the only area in which the bank doesn't now pursue business with midsize companies, Mr. Acheson said.

"The middle market is not covered nationally - it's covered regionally," he said, adding that BankAmerica was departing from that pattern by "putting together more integrated national marketing for the middle market."

The number of business development calls being made by his unit outside Illinois is expected to increase by a fifth. This means that more than half of the 5,000 business development calls by the Illinois bank's task force should be made outside Illinois this year, Mr. Acheson said.

His Illinois bank also been conducting marketing blitzes, in which a few dozen bank officers call on prospects throughout a state in a day or two. And senior officers host seminars on banking and economic issues in major cities.

Last week, BankAmerica did a marketing blitz in Michigan. Earlier in the year it covered Missouri, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

Mr. Acheson said BankAmerica, with about $25 billion in loans outstanding to midsize companies in the United States, is the nation's biggest market lender in the field, with Chemical Banking Corp. a close second. About an eighth of BankAmerica's middle-market loans are on the Illinois bank's books.

Two-thirds of the Illinois bank's loans are to Illinois companies.

The Illinois bank, which has offices only in the Chicago area, does only corporate banking, with the exception of a network of automated teller machines it is opening in Jewel grocery stores.

With its new efforts in the Midwest and Southeast, in addition to substantial operations in 10 western states, BankAmerica has $227 billion of assets.

R. Jay Tejera, a stock analyst in Seattle with Dain Bosworth, Inc., said BankAmerica's plan to extend its middle-market banking activities seemed like a good idea.

Midwestern regional banks such as Boatmen's Bancshares Inc. and Fifth Third Bancorp. are going to be hard-pressed to compete with the breadth and sophistication of BankAmerica's services, Mr. Tejera said.

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