It was decision day for the Bank of America on the future of Chairman Ken Lewis. And, Ken Lewis lost:
Bank of America shareholders stripped Kenneth D. Lewis of his chairman’s title on Wednesday while allowing him to remain president and chief executive officer, in a vote that may mark the beginning of the end of his leadership at the embattled bank.SEIU has led the effort to dump Lewis. Over the past couple weeks, SEIU along with MoveOn.org, True Majority and a bunch of other groups collected more than 90,000 "taxpayer proxy cards." You know, as taxpayers, we are the largest shareholder in BofA, and those 90,000 taxpayers want Ken Lewis fired. The proxy cards were delivered at the meeting today.
Walter E. Massey will succeed Mr. Lewis as chairman, the bank said.
Earlier, at an annual meeting here that was widely viewed as a referendum on Mr. Lewis, Bank of America shareholders re-elected him to the board, along with the company’s 18 directors, by “a comfortable margin,” a spokesman said. But the vote to shear Mr. Lewis’s chairmanship raised questions about how much longer he could steer the bank as shareholder anger mounted over his handling of the contentious acquisition of Merrill Lynch at the height of the financial crisis.
