BoA’s $50 billion purchase of Merrill Lynch will create one of the largest wealth management businesses in the world with about 20,000 financial advisors and more than $2 trillion in client assets. As part of the deal, BoA has about 50 per cent ownership of the asset management business BlackRock, which had $1.26 trillion of assets under management as at the end of September last year.

In the Wells Fargo-Wachovia deal, the all-stock acquisition of Wachovia by the Californian-based bank has created a financial services group serving 48 million customers and operating from 39 US states. Wells Fargo sealed its deal to buy Wachovia following a bitter legal tussle with US banking titan Citi, which had previously announced it had agreed to acquire Wachovia.

While both enlarged groups operate wealth management businesses, Wells Fargo and Wachovia have so far been predominantly domestic US firms, unlike Merrill Lynch, which has a significant international footprint.

Commenting at the conclusion of the deal, Kenneth Lewis, chief executive and chairman of Bank of America, said: "We created this new organisation because we believe that wealth management and corporate and investment banking represent significant growth opportunities, especially when combined with our leading capabilities in consumer and commercial banking."

Bank of America has previously announced it expects to achieve a target of $7 billion in expense savings by 2012, including up to 35,000 job cuts.