Leadership by Geoff Colvin

Power Point: Extraordinary measures for extraordinary times

January 16, 2009: 6:54 PM ET

"These are extraordinary times. The credit markets literally hit a wall, and nobody lending to consumers or who is in the capital markets is immune."

-- Bank of America (BAC) CEO Ken Lewis in a conference call with investors Friday morning, following the government announcement that BofA would receive another $20 billion from its Troubled Asset Relief Program.

BofA also gets guarantees on $118 billion of assets backed by soured real-estate loans, most of which came with BofA's purchase of Merrill Lynch. Lewis said that after paying $50 billion for Merrill Lynch in September, BofA discovered in December that its asset deterioration was "much, much higher" than forecasted. BofA's market cap is now $36 billion. The bank reported a quarterly loss of $1.8 billion this morning and the stock closed down 1.14% at $7.18.

Elsewhere in the banking world, the stock price of Citigroup (C), which lost 43% of its value over the past week, dropped another 9% Friday to $3.50, on news of an $8.3 billion quarterly loss. On Thursday JPMorgan Chase (JPM) reported its quarterly profits plummeted 73%, but the firm still managed to stay in the black. Its stock fell 6% on the news and lost another 1.5% today to settle at $22.82. -- Jessica Shambora

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Pattie Sellers
Patricia Sellers
Senior Editor at Large, Fortune
Executive Director of MPW/Live Content, Time Inc.

Fortune senior editor at large Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Marissa Mayer: Ready to Rumble at Yahoo," "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), and "Remodeling Martha" (Martha Stewart). She has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women in Business" package every year since its launch in 1998. Pattie is Executive Director of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business and beyond. She oversees MPW programs that enable women leaders to extend their influence and empower the next generation—such as Fortune MPW Entrepreneurs and the Fortune-U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. Beyond her Fortune duties, she is also developing Live Content across Time Inc. Pattie grew up in Allentown, PA, graduated from the University of Virginia, and started at Fortune in 1984. Her blog, Postcards, is about how power players lead, manage others, and navigate their careers.

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