I'm sure its for 'personal' reasons though http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a_1IUYYNhlpQ
I have been (but not for much longer) a BAC customer over the last 8 years and you cannot believe how they treat you... Nickle and dime and dollar you to absolute death and then if you get on the phone with them they will not give you a peso back of your money unless you kill yourself in trying to get it... Seriously, they have multiple cascading strategies and convoluted plans to pull as much from your account in so many different ways as possible that its mind boggling... All this under and from Ken Lewis's watch.. may he reap what he has sewed... and don't let the door hit you on the way out Kenny boy... I am still leaving them to go to a local solid Federal Credit Union...
Ken Lewis never seemed to have what it takes to be a brilliant Chairman & CEO. Don't know if he got bad advice or just surrounded himself with not-so-bright advisors. Just look at his recent acquisitions: MBNA, Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch. It seems that he paid too much and his timing was very bad on all the transactions. MBNA: Paid way too much at the top of the market. Countrywide: Paid way too much. Why didn't he wait for BK and then pick up the pieces he wanted afterwards. (Just like Barclays did for bits and pieces of Lehman Bros.) Merrill Lynch: Where do you start on that one...
Maybe he can be rich and retired before that House of Cards falls. Worked for some ratings agency employees.
Everytime a CEO leaves for personal reasons, the stock collapses in about 6 months. They leave to hand the blame off to someone else. BAC must be in bad shape if he is leaving. I mean why not stay, pull out of the financial mess and give yourself a big bonus? Maybe because this mess is bigger than we thought and there is no coming back from it.
they screwed me so hard once. They bounced one of my customers checks. They sent me a letter which I got about 3 weeks later. In the mean time they charged me 25 - 40 bucks a shot on about 10 transactions for overdraft protection. I still bank with them because I have not wanted to go through the hassle of changing.
I don't see how this is a positive for BAC. You can say all you want about the heads of these banks, but there is probably noone more qualified to run a bank than Ken Lewis. He was the mastermind/dealmaker behind taking a small North Carolina bank and creating one of the largest financials in the world. This is the reason that Bernanke et al came to him when the shit was hitting the fan on Countrywide and Merrill. He is leaving because he thinks Cuomo's attacks have become a distraction for employees, but Cuomo is just grandstanding to run for governor. I can't imagine they will find anyone nearly as competent. I sold at $17.20 after the news, if it rallies off this its a better short with no other news on banks, IMHO.
his bank was insolvent and they hid the insolvency by stuffing other insolvent companies into his fold. At the time of that ML deal I made that conjecture... It was confirmed many months later. He ran BofA into the ground. Many CEOS substituted growth and acquisition for management and prudence. He looks to be one of them.
Most people in North Carolina think that Ken Lewis ran Bank of America into the ground while at the same time putting a culture in place that was abusive to customers. I am a former BAC customer. After 15+ years of deteriorating customer service I finally switched about three years ago and never looked back. - Greg