No surprise here, but Bank of America just announced they’re going to buy Countrywide for $4.5 billion.  Seems like a good deal to me, and no surprise given the $2 billion investment B of A put into the troubled lender late last year. 

B of A President and CEO Kenneth Lewis hasn’t called me with the exact details yet, but it looks to be an all-stock purchase, with Countrywide shareholders receiving .1822 shares of Bank of America stock for each Countrywide share.  WOW!  .1822 per share.

There’s an interesting post on real/diablog about it … well, all over the Web, really.  I wonder if B of A is really getting a good deal.  I think they are.

(still no word on Countrywide’s site about the deal as of 11:10am)

(update: 2:51pm – everything I’ve been hearing is that B of A is getting the deal at roughly 20% of what Countrywide was worth last year.  20% … quite a bargain.  B of A isn’t typically a home loan company, so it’ll be interesting to see how this all shakes out.  And Mozilo – will he walk?