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Kenneth Lewis' days as chief executive of Bank of America may finally be numbered. Observers and investors say a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission may ultimately cost Lewis the top job at the nation's largest bank...
...Monday, the bank agreed to pay $33 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that Lewis and other executives misled the bank's investors prior to its $50 billion purchase last year of brokerage firm Merrill Lynch. In a separate development on Monday, the bank also announced that it had hired Sallie Krawcheck, a former top Citigroup executive, to run the Merrill Lynch brokerage division as part of a management shake-up. Observers say the move frees up Brian Moynihan, who had been in charge of Merrill's divisions and has long been thought to be Lewis' successor...
...Lewis has said that he would like to stay on as CEO of Bank of America until his firm is able to repay the $45 billion it received in government assistance during the financial crisis. Some money managers say that could take years - and it looks increasingly unlikely that Lewis will be able to hang on that long. In April, shareholders voted to strip Lewis of the title of chairman. Moreover, regulators have pushed the bank to replace a number of its corporate directors. The SEC settlement may be the final straw for Lewis...
...very rare when you split the chairman and CEO position for the top executive to stay in place," says Paul Miller, who follows Bank of America at FBR Capital Markets. The executive's performance during the financial crisis has come under increasing scrutiny in the past few months. At the center of the criticism, and the SEC complaint, is the way Lewis handled the Merrill Lynch acquisition. Lewis and his executives hammered out the details of the multibillion deal to buy Merrill over the course of a single weekend during the worst of the financial crisis. Quickly, it became apparent...
...complaint, which was filed Monday, alleges that Lewis misled shareholders in advance of the Merrill acquisition, withholding information that might have caused investors to vote against the acquisition he wanted. In a proxy statement sent to shareholders prior to the vote on the deal, Bank of America stated that Merrill had agreed not to pay bonuses to its top executives until after the acquisition was closed. Shortly after completing the acquisition, Lewis fired Merrill's top executive John Thain for, among other things, paying out $3.6 billion in bonuses to Merrill's top executives just days before the Bank...