On Wednesday, July 18, the bank of America, the second biggest U.S. bank, posted its second quarter report with $2.5 billion earnings. A cost-cutting plan, introduced a year earlier, helped the bank's fundamentals improve. Expenses dropped to $17 billion, or by 35 per cent, while the number of employees declined more than 12,000, what is the first phase of bank's cost cutting plan. Soon after the data were out, the shares increased to $7.93.