Ken Lewis's days are numbered

The egotistical asshole Ken Lewis may finally be losing his job. That is, if enough mutual funds and pension funds will vote him (and his incompetent board) out. I guess the nasty details of the Merrill deal coming to light this week have made the shareholders realize that maybe, just maybe, he was not fulfilling his fiduciary duty! From Bloomberg:

April 29 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis is losing shareholder support heading into today’s annual meeting amid speculation that government stress tests will show the bank needs more capital.

Lined up against Lewis’s re-election as chairman of the biggest U.S. bank by assets are the California Public Employees’ Retirement System -- the nation’s largest public pension fund -- as well as proxy advisers Glass Lewis & Co., RiskMetrics Group Inc. and Egan-Jones Proxy Services, among other investors. Shareholders have also targeted 70-year-old lead directorTemple Sloan Jr.

Ballots will be cast at the bank headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina on whether to re-elect directors and split the chairman and CEO jobs held by Lewis. Dislodging Lewis after eight years as chairman may depend on how mutual funds and brokerages vote, opponents including CtW Investment Group said.

“It’s largely up to the big mutual fund companies and they are usually very hesitant to cross with the management of financial services companies,” said William R. Atwood, executive director of the Illinois State Investment Board, which will vote its 1.5 million shares against Lewis’s re-election.

Lewis, 62, may face demands from regulators to raise capital after results of government stress tests are released May 4. The bank needs $60 billion to $70 billion of capital, according to Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group Inc. analyst Paul Miller, who cited separate tests performed by his firm, which assumed a 12 percent jobless rate, compared with about 10 percent used by the government test.

I guess CALPERs finally realized enough is enough after watching there ~23 million shares of BOA drop 79% over the past year and 1/2. If Lewis goes, I wonder how long it will take these same shareholders to sue the US government (Paulson and Bernanke) for cocercion.