Credit card operations lost 1.0 billion US dollars and home loans lost 1.6 billion. Its global markets trading operations however posted a profit of 2.1 billion US dollars. The overall results were hurt by 2.6 billion US dollars in writedowns on some assets, including from Merrill Lynch, the troubled brokerage giant acquired by Bank of America at the height of the financial crisis. But the company said this was due to "the market's improved view of Bank of America's credit cost." The group also took a 402 million dollar pretax charge to pay the US government to terminate its asset guarantee program. Chief executive Kenneth Lewis, who is stepping down at the end of the year, said the bank performed well excluding these "non-core" costs. "Excluding those items, our revenue continued to hold up well," Lewis said.