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...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...
...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 that Merrill Lynch was in much worse shape than...
...SEC 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...
...according to the SEC complaint, Lewis and other Bank of America executives had full knowledge of Merrill's plans to pay out bonuses to top executives. In fact, prior to sending out the proxy statement, the complaint asserts, Bank of America had agreed to let Merrill pay out as much as $5.8 billion in year-end bonuses, a little over $2 billion more than Thain actually paid out. In settling the SEC complaint - paying the fine - Bank of America neither confirmed nor denied the charges...
...SEC settlement demonstrates the lack of regard Lewis and the former Bank of America board has for shareholders," says Finger. "They were not as open as they should have been...