Bank of America on Tuesday touted the speed with which it has raised $33 billion in capital to nearly meet a government mandated goal that will serve to protect the bank from a worse than expected downturn in the economy.

We are pleased to have nearly reached our goal this quickly, said Joe Price, the bank’s chief financial officer in a released statement.

The bank said that it will ‘comfortably exceed’ the $33.9 billion capital buffer required by the Federal Reserve after a government “stress test” in May.

In a new development toward the capital raising goal, the bank said today it has agreed to exchange $9.5 billion of preferred stock from non-government investors to 704 million shares of common stock.

The company says that as part of its capital plan it could issue up to an additional 296 million common shares, which at yesterday’s closing price would generate up to $3.32 billion.

Among the measures taken to increase capital for the buffer requirement were $13.5 billion in common stock offerings and a sale of stock it owned in China Construction bank.

Bank of america Investment