I. Executive Summary Our project contains a detailed and comprehensive financial analysis of two companies in the banking industry. A main goal of our work was to accurately compare these two companies in a variety of ways and determine which company would be better to invest in. Barclays is a British based company that operates under the International Accounting Standards (IAS) while the U.S. based Bank of America operates under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). We examined the effects these different standards had on the two companies. We then gathered information from Barclays and Bank of America’s consolidated financial statements and used this information to calculate various ratios needed for analyzing the two companies.

In addition, we compared similarities and differences between Barclays and Bank of America in relation to how they disclose and deal with various accounting and reporting issues. These issues include disclosure of employee information, disclosure of foreign operations, the valuation and disclosure of intangible assets, and numerous others. We also took the foreign currency exchange rates into account and examined the impact it had on Barclays as well as Bank of America. II. History
Both Barclays and Bank of America have a history of great service, and being one of the premier banks of England and the United States respectively. It is impressive that Bank of America can be looked at as the equivalent of Barclays when it originated almost 300 years later, while both are prominent now, they each chose different paths to get to where they are now.
Barclays
In the late 17th century, there were many Goldsmith-Banker businesses that funded the dreams of many entrepreneurs. In 1690 John Freame founded one of these businesses with his partner Thomas Gould. The name “Barclays” became associated with the company when