BankAmerica Corp. has established a beachhead in New England.
The San Francisco bank recently opened a Boston office, staffed with 17, that will offer small-business lending, real estate leasing, and automobile financing.
Arthur Beeman, senior vice president, has been named to head the office as Northeast regional manager of commercial banking.
The office will compete head to head with native New England banks like BankBoston Corp. and Fleet Financial Group. It will also go up against a growing number of out-of-state banks that are opening Boston offices to win commercial business, analysts said.
Boston bankers said they were not concerned about the added competition, pointing out that they have commercial offices near BankAmerica's home turf.
"In this day and age it doesn't matter where you are located as long as you are in the customers' backyard when they need you," said Karen Schwartzman, a spokeswoman at BankBoston, which has an office in Palo Alto, Calif.
Analysts said many banks with national ambitions have been opening far- flung offices, primarily to serve large corporate clients. These offices often offer small-business and middle-market lending as well, they said.
BankAmerica has several commercial banking offices across the United States. The Boston foray-permanent downtown space was taken over only three months ago-is its first into New England; the closest BankAmerica office, in New York, offers wholesale banking.
Last year the company opened a 200-person Atlanta office that competes for commercial clients with Southeast heavyweights First Union Corp., NationsBank Corp., and Wachovia Corp.
But many of its remote offices were acquired over the years. The one in Chicago, for example, came from Continental Bank Corp., which BankAmerica bought in 1994.
Banks have been particularly attracted to Boston, analysts said, because the city has bounced back from the deep recession it went through in the early 1990s.
BankAmerica has a history of attempted New England acquisitions. In 1991 it was a finalist in the bidding for Bank of New England Corp. but lost out to Fleet.
"It's not a secret that we are always looking at business opportunities," said Lotus Lou, a BankAmerica spokeswoman. "But we can also grow without making acquisitions."
The decision to start fresh in New England rather than buy in may reflect the high cost of banks there, said Thomas Theurkauf, an analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.
