Bank of America (BAC.NYSE) is selling off the last of its shares in China Construction Bank (601938.SHA, 0939.HKG) for US$1.5 billion after eight years of disappointing returns, The Wall Street Journal reported. The selloff marks the end of an era where firms such as Goldman Sachs (GS.NYSE) and UBS (UBS.NYSE) piled into the world’s third-largest retail banking market. After making millions taking China’s big banks public, Western banks suffered as the Chinese banks started competing with them for Chinese clients. “These shareholdings haven’t yielded the kind of China access Western banks initially expected,” said Keith Pogson, a Hong Kong-based partner at Ernst & Young.