Bank of America Corp. expects to sell asset manager Columbia Management Group as it tries to preserve capital and divest noncore assets, according to people familiar with the situation in a report Wednesday by Dow Jones.
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B of A is also looking to sell First Republic Bank, a private bank it got with Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.
Bank of America picked up Columbia as part of its 2004 purchase of FleetBoston Financial Corp. It had $386.4 billion of assets under management at Dec. 31. But the view inside the banking company was that Columbia is redundant when compared to BlackRock Inc., a New York money manager that was partly owned by Merrill. Bank of America is not considering a sale of its BlackRock stake.
