offer from his father-in-law, John McKee Spratt (1907–1973), a banker, attorney, and judge, to work at the Bank of Fort Mill, a small family-owned bank. McColl accepted his father's arranging an introduction to officers at another bank. Young McColl went to work as a management trainee for American Commercial Bank in Charlotte, North Carolina. Career NCNB and Nationsbank In 1960, a year after McColl joined American Commercial Bank, the bank merged with Greensboro's Security National Bank, becoming North Carolina National Bank. Vigorously competitive, McColl deployed a methodical, military approach to transforming the small regional bank, via incremental acquisitions and mergers, into NationsBank and ultimately Bank of America. McColl became President of NCNB in 1974 at age 39. In 1982, the bank made its first major out-of-state purchase—First National Bank of Lake City, Florida. This was the first in a wave of mergers and acquisitions during the 1980s. This was initially a defensive measure intended to make NCNB and other major Southern banks too rich to be taken over by New York money center banks. Most of those were orchestrated by McColl, who became CEO in 1983. NCNB made national headlines with its purchase of the failed First Republic Bank Corporation of Dallas, Texas from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (1988). Over the next few years, it acquired more than 200 thrifts and community banks, many through the Resolution Trust Corporation program (1989 to 1992). In 1991, NCNB bought C&S/Sovran of Atlanta and Norfolk, Virginia, which was the result of a merger a year earlier between Citizens & Southern National Bank of Atlanta and Sovran Bank of Norfolk. The merged bank changed its name to NationsBank. After the NationsBank merger, the bank acquired Maryland National Corporation (1992), Chicago Research and Trading Group (1993), BankSouth (1995), St. Louis-based Boatmen's Bancshares (1996), Jacksonville, Florida based Barnett Bank (1997) and Montgomery Securities (1997). Bank of America In April 1998, under McColl's direction, NationsBank bought San Francisco-based BankAmerica. Although NationsBank was the nominal survivor and the merged bank was (and still is) headquartered in Charlotte, the merged company took the better-known name of Bank of America. Among other later acquisitions, Bank of America in 2004 acquired FleetBoston Financial, thus ultimately holding the country's oldest bank charter (1784). Strategically, McColl blunted opposition to the bank mergers and acquisitions by pledging in advance billion in loans for low-income neighborhoods, particularly with the creation of NationsBank and Bank