There’s a new job requirement for the next Bank of America CEO, should one ever be found: dealing with a completely dysfunctional board of directors.
The U.S.’s largest bank continues to devour itself in its search for a successor to the apparently irreplaceable Ken Lewis. And so the firm will miss its second self-imposed deadline to name a winner of the Worst Job on Wall Street contest. There will be no new BofA CEO by Thanksgiving, leaving the bank little more than a month before Lewis’ resignation takes effect.
Not content to ravage the bank with his acquisition of Merrill Lynch and acceptance of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke as his liege lords, Lewis seems to have picked the worst possible time to resign. You see, at the Federal Reserve’s request, the bank had just tossed half of its board and added six new directors, and this board has simply failed to “gel,” according to the FT. So when Lewis surprised them with his resignation in September, they didn’t know what the hell to do.

It certainly hasn’t helped that literally no one outside of internal candidates unpalatable to some important constituency wants to take the job. And BofA keeps making the job look more and more unattractive, with one candidate telling it to shove it when he learned that the next CEO probably won’t get to be chairman as well.
And so, the quest for a taker for the Worst Job on Wall Street deep into the winter. How long before Ken Lewis becomes a viable candidate once more?
Struggle to find successor for Lewis at BofA [FT]