July 9 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis said the biggest U.S. mortgage lender can renegotiate hundreds of thousands of troubled loans without trimming its dividend or raising cash.

``Our goal is to keep as many families in their homes as possible,'' Lewis, 61, said today in Los Angeles. ``We see no reason to cut the dividend and no reason to raise any more capital.''

Bank of America, which completed the $2.5 billion acquisition of Countrywide Financial Corp. last week, plans to rework at least $40 billion in loans over two years to keep more than 250,000 families from foreclosing, Lewis said. The world's biggest banks have raised more than $400 billion in the biggest housing crisis since the Great Depression, including $20.7 billion by Bank of America.

Foreclosure filings rose 48 percent from a year earlier in May as banks repossessed twice as many homes, RealtyTrac Inc. said in a June 13 report. Bank of America has been paying a quarterly dividend of 64 cents a share since mid-2007.

Bank of America, the second-biggest U.S. bank, rose as much as 4.5 percent in after-hours trading. It fell $1.48, or 6.3 percent, to $22.06 at 4 p.m. on the New York Stock Exchange. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based company has lost more than half its value in the past year.

Deteriorating housing prices, rising unemployment and record oil prices pushed U.S. consumer confidence to a 28-year low last month. Lewis said that's the ``challenge we're facing as we work to revive our housing markets and our economy.'' He expects the U.S. economy to begin recovering in the second half of next year.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon said yesterday that buyers are returning to some types of mortgage products and the crisis in the capital markets will ease.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ari Levy in San Francisco at alevy5@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 9, 2008 17:42 EDT