Nov. 2–Bank of America chief Kenneth D. Lewis bragged last week that his $47 billion purchase of FleetBoston had created a “long-term vision for a truly national bank.”

Not quite. While the new Bank of America will have a strong presence on both coasts and through much of the South, a map of its holdings still looks like a puzzle with a few pieces missing.

The new BoA will have a tiny presence in the Midwest–just five branches and 1 percent of deposits currently in Illinois and nothing in Indiana, Wisconsin or Ohio. Nor is there any Bank of America retail branches in Western states such as Montana, Wyoming or Colorado, and coverage in the South is spotty

There is still room for a major player to pull together a deal that would dominate different parts of the country, including a significant piece of the South. One of the few banks with the size to pull off such a move is Chicago-based Bank One Corp.

Bank One is dominant in the Midwest and has a strong presense in parts of the South. It has retail branches in 14 states.

The Bank of America-Fleet deal revived speculation that Bank One might be on the prowl, particularly for a regional player such as Atlanta-based Sun Trust Banks or an Ohio bank such as KeyCorp or National City.

Jamie Dimon, Bank One’s chief executive and chairman, declined to comment about where–or even if–he is looking. “We don’t comment about acquisition plans,” said bank spokesman Tom Kelly.

Still, Bank One is on the short list of analysts handicapping what the next deal might be.

“The two that people are expecting to make a move are Bank One and Wells Fargo,” said Arnold Danielson, of Danielson Associates, a bank advisory firm in Rockville, Md.

It’s also possible that Bank One could forgo buying a bank and instead pursue a merger with another large, dominant regional player–such as a San Francisco-based Wells Fargo–creating a megabank that could challenge the new BoA, Danielson said.

“Wells is big enough to pay, but they couldn’t pay a large premium — it would be a stretch for Wells Fargo,” he said. “So they would basically have to call it an equal merger.”

Similarly, a marriage with Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia would create a dominate bank east of the Rockies, he said, adding that such a deal would be difficult given the banks very different cultures.

Although adding Bank One would give Bank of America a truly national presence, that deal can’t happen. Even if BoA could afford it, it is bumping up a federal cap that limits any bank to 10 percent of the nation’s deposits.

Citigroup Inc., the nation’s largest bank, has focused on growth in areas outside of retail banking, while J.P. Morgan Chase, another large player, “isn’t big enough without bending over backwards to do it,” Danielson said.

More likely than a merger with a larger bank, analysts say, is that Bank One will go after a regional player such as SunTrust, an Atlanta bank with a large presence in that state, Maryland and Florida. That would build on Bank One’s strong presence in Louisiana.

Or Dimon might decide to pursue PNC Financial, a Pittsburgh bank that has built a strong presence in Pennsylvania, southwest Ohio and New Jersey.

The stock of both SunTrust and PNC ticked upward last week, as investors anticipated they were likely matches for a bank with designs on making a big acquisition.

Bank of America made such deals more difficult by overpaying for Fleet, driving up the expectations of acquisition targets, said Tom Brown, a hedge fund manager who follows bank stocks at Second Curve Capital.

“For this to cause another wave of deals, what you would need to believe is there are a bunch of idiot CEOs out there like Ken Lewis,” Brown said. “For him paying such a high premium — 43, 44 percent — he raises the expectation of the sellers.

“This deal could actually slow down the pace of consolidation.”

It’s a mistake to assume that BoA has a big advantage just because it has a coast-to-coast reach, Brown said. “A bank’s market on the retail side is every street corner where they have a branch,” he said.

“So the LaSalle bank branch at LaSalle and Monroe — its primary competitor is the Harris Bank branch.

“It doesn’t matter how many branches somebody else has in Seattle. On the retail side of the business, the battle is street corner to street corner.”

Some analysts would like to see Bank One make a deal, if only to improve financial performance. Revenue growth has stalled, and one way to quickly boost that would be to buy a medium- to large-sized bank, said Bradley Vander Ploeg, banking analyst with Raymond James & Associates in Chicago.

He points to KeyCorp as a good fit. Based in Cleveland, KeyCorp has some overlap with Bank One, particularly in Ohio. Bank One could cut costs by eliminating duplicated services, “but keep the earnings momentum going,” Vander Ploeg said.

It’s also likely that Dimon might make a major acquisition that is not a bank. One of his largest deals since joining Bank One in March 2000 was the acquisition this summer of Zurich Life for $500 million.

“I do get the strong sense that Jaime Dimon still has a lot to prove at Bank One, and the turn around he is engineering and that he has promised has not fully taken shape,” Vander Ploeg said. “It doesn’t have to be a bank — it could be a brokerage operation, it could be a money manager, any number of things in financial services,” he said.

“As long as it’s big enough to make a difference.”

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