We've seen a couple of high-profile articles recently on Bank of America and its CEO, one in the Washington Post and one just published in the New York Times. The Post article had a more negative tone. One reason might be that the Times reporter got a sit-down interview, essentially obligating him to include a quote like the following: "But don't bother feeling sorry for Mr. Moynihan. As far as he's concerned, things are just fine. 'It's been a great year and we've learned a lot,' he says during an interview in his office here, 58 floors above downtown Charlotte. 'There's not a better job in the world.' "
A massive consumer bank is always going to be a target. The PR folks at Bank of America have no doubt been geared up for some time. And they should be, for the news right now is negative. Not even making your CEO available for a slew of interviews will keep people from concluding that the bank is really struggling.
Fairly or not, responsibility will be laid at Moynihan's feet. Most people understand that much of the mortgage putback and foreclosure risk came from his predecessor Ken Lewis, who thought he inked the deal of the century when he bought Countrywide in 2008. He left a huge mess for Moynihan to clean up. And it remains to be seen how quickly he can do so.
That isn't to say that Moynihan hasn't done a lot right. He has. But the major problems now are thorny, and unfortunately somewhat unique to the bank that has 1.3 million angry customers behind on their payments and a rising amount of popular support behind them. This may be time for something dramatic. I'm not talking about third-world-like debt forgiveness, but the CEO may needs to think way outside the box.
For more:
- here's the Times article
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ELPIDA MEMORY EMC FIDELITY NATIONAL INFORMATION SVCS. FISERV
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