Ex-Wells Fargo CEO Has A Message For BofA Shareholders: Y'All Don't Know Sh*t
On September 22, Bank of America will put to a vote the question of whether or not Brian Moynihan should be fired from one of his jobs (i.e. should the company split the chairman and CEO titles). So far, most people have said yes, Moynihan should lose the chairmanship (and others have said he should be removed from the c-suite entirely while we're at it).
While the bank has spent of bunch of money trying to convince people otherwise, so far the only individual outside the firm willing to defend the guy has been Warren Buffett and that's just a thing sweet old people do. Today, though, BriMoy got some slightly more vocal support in the form of ex-Wells Fargo CEO Richard Kovacevich, who said that as a former bank executive who doesn't have enough fingers to count the number of times he had to tell his shareholders "STFU, you don't know what the hell you're talking about," investors at BofA should lay off Moynihan and let him do his job(s).
...investors often do not know what is best for a company, because they have worse information than managers, Kovacevich told Reuters in a phone interview. "I've probably done more things against the wishes of stockholders than anyone in the history of banking. Ask anyone who’s ever held our stock who was right," he said...Bank of America aroused the ire of some investors last year when it named Chief Executive Brian Moynihan as its chairman, undoing a 2009 investor vote to separate the jobs. The vote next week came in response to shareholder complaints. To Kovacevich, the 2009 shareholder vote at Bank of America to separate the chairman and CEO spots is not important anymore. "What somebody thought then is totally irrelevant," he said.
So, 1) Leave Moynihan alone but 2) If you take away one thing from this conversation, Dick would like it to be that he's serious when he says he's probably looked more shareholders in the eye and told them to go f*ck themselves than anyone in modern history. So he knows what he's talking about here.
Ex-Wells CEO says Bank of America investors should back off [Reuters]
