Argus joins US board

FORMER BHP Billiton chairman Don Argus has been appointed to the global advisory board of US banking heavyweight Bank of America.

Mr Argus joins a dozen international business and public policy figures on the advisory board that has been set up to advise the bank's executives "on trends and emerging opportunities in local markets", Bank of America said in a statement.

The council will be chaired by Bank of America's chief executive officer Brian Moynihan and will hold its first meeting in Hong Kong in early March.

Mr Argus, who retired from BHP Billiton three years ago, will join France's former finance minister Thierry Breton and South Korea's Chong-Suk Choi, who heads up the Korea Investment Corporation.

Others include Germany's Jurgen Kluge, a McKinsey & Company director, and Bader Al Sa'ad, the managing director and chief executive of the Kuwait Investment Authority.

It will also include David Westin, the former president of America's ABC News.

The Bank of America Global Advisory Council will hold its inaugural annual meeting in Hong Kong in early March.

At the height of the global financial crisis, Bank of America acquired Wall Street investment banking icon Merrill Lynch for about $US50 billion, to create the world's largest financial services company. Bank of America has the most deposits of any US bank, while Merrill Lynch is the world's largest and most widely recognised brokerage.

While Bank of America last week reported strong quarterly gains across several divisions, a series of large legal settlements over its mortgage loans drained the bank's earnings, which plunged 63 per cent to $US732 million ($695 million). All told, one-off expenses wiped out $US5.9 billion from the bank's quarterly earnings.

Bank of America inherited its mortgage woes through Countrywide Financial, the subprime lending giant it also bought in the depths of the financial crisis.