Bank of America plans to sell Columbia Management, the asset manager it acquired five years ago, in a bid to preserve capital and offload non-core assets, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter.

Columbia Management was acquired by Bank of America through its takeover of FleetBoston in 2004. At the end of last year, the Columbia Management Group had $386.4 billion in assets under management.

In comparison, BlackRock, which is part owned by Merrill Lynch, which is in turn now owned by BoA, had $1.307 trillion in assets under management at 31 December 2008. Bank of America is not looking to sell its stake in BlackRock, the report said.

According to the paper, Bank of America is also seeking a buyer for First Republic Bank, a private bank brought into the BoA fold through its acquisition of Merrill Lynch at the beginning of this year.

Merrill acquired First Republic Bank, which is headquartered in San Francisco, for $1.8 billion in 2007.

A Bank of America spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by WealthBriefing on the matter.

In other developments, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch continue to attract political attention in the US over bonuses paid to staff. Politicians are pursuing the public disclosure of bonus information as BoA received $45 billion in taxpayers funds under the US authorities’ Troubled Asset Relief Programme.

This week it was reported that a Democratic congressman asked that the US Treasury and Federal Reserve say what they knew about $3.6 billion in bonuses that Merrill Lynch paid late in December, immediately before its government-facilitated acquisition by Bank of America.

Dennis Kucinich, chairman of an investigative House subcommittee, is reported to have told the Financial Times: “These bonuses are 22 times the size of the AIG bonuses... It’s going to get a lot of attention, and we’re going to make sure of it.”