LOS ANGELES - Credit-rating agency Standard & Poor's today cut Countrywide Financial's rating to junk status, citing new concerns that Bank of America may not take on all of the troubled mortgage lender's debt once its proposed takeover of Countrywide closes.

LOS ANGELES - Bank of America will expand efforts to help Countrywide Financial borrowers avoid foreclosure on trouble mortgages, a top bank executive said today.

In a hearing about its plan to buy Countrywide, the company will promise to help 265,000 troubled borrowers keep their homes and take other steps. Pushing to fast-track its takeover of wounded home-loan goliath Countrywide Financial Corp., Bank of America Corp. will promise today to help 265,000 troubled borrowers keep their homes over the next two years by refinancing or modifying at least $40 billion in mortgages.

Beleaguered Bank of America Corp. shareholders pleaded Wednesday with the bank's chief executive not to proceed with a $4 billion acquisition of distressed subprime mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp.

(AP) — Bank of America Corp. said Tuesday it will tighten its mortgage lending standards after it completes its acquisition of Countrywide Financial Corp. later this year, and it will stop making one type of loan widely blamed for foreclosures. The Charlotte, N.C.-based bank's plans came as ...

A senator calls the payments to Angelo Mozilo and David Sambol 'perverse.' The top two executives of beleaguered Countrywide Financial Corp. will pocket $19 million in stock next week, according to a regulatory filing. It's the start of a series of multimillion-dollar payments expected to go to the pair before and after the company's pending takeover by Bank of America Corp.

Ninety-one community groups in California have sent a letter Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis asking the bank to cease foreclosures on mortgages in the portfolios of BofA and Countrywide Financial Corp. (BAC) (CFC)

Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and four other U.S. lenders will announce new steps today to help some borrowers in danger of default stay in their homes, according to three people familiar with the plans.

To understand how the collapse of the nation's real estate market is hitting borrowers of all kinds, consider Carson Moore. He always pays more than the minimum due on his credit cards, and does it on time, every time. But in January, Bank of America told him it was nearly tripling his interest rate, to 22%.

The nation's No. 1 home lender suffers its first annual deficit in more than 30 years. Countrywide Financial Corp. reported a $422-million fourth-quarter loss Tuesday and said 33% of its sub-prime mortgages were now delinquent, but the chairman of Bank of America Corp. said its $4-billion takeover of the mortgage giant remained "a go."