BofA may name stopgap CEO if board needs time for search

O'Neill, a former chief financial officer of predecessor BankAmerica Corp., withdrew from consideration after talking with search-committee members because he felt they didn't fully grasp how serious regulators are in their demands for change, the people said.

O'Neill told the committee members that the company needed to increase the size of its banking operations and shrink its trading business, one person briefed on the talks said. The committee members responded that such a shift would be unproductive because it would abandon the strategy set when Lewis bought Merrill Lynch & Co., the person said.

Compensation is another obstacle, because Bank of America's US$45 billion bailout puts the CEO under the purview of paymaster Kenneth Feinberg. Lewis agreed in October to forgo any pay for 2009 after being advised to do so by Feinberg.

Feinberg probably wouldn't approve a package big enough to lure PNC Financial Services Group Inc. Senior Vice Chairman William Demchak, who was among 18 candidates on a list provided Nov. 3 by Finger Interests Ltd., a Houston-based investment fund with 1.1 million Bank of America shares. As of August, Demchak owned about 219,000 shares, currently worth about US$12 million, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Finger Candidates

At least four of those on the Finger list subsequently said they weren't interested. They are O'Neill; former JPMorgan Chase & Co. investment-banking co-head William Winters; U.S. Bancorp CEO Richard Davis; and Eugene McQuade, a former Freddie Mac president who now oversees Citigroup's largest banking subsidiary, according to people familiar with the matter.

Two executives not on the list, Bank of New York Mellon CEO Robert Kelly and BlackRock Inc. CEO Laurence Fink, have told colleagues and friends they're not interested.

Ex-GMAC LLC CEO Alvaro de Molina, a former Bank of America chief financial officer who also made the list, was never contacted, people said. Charles Scharf, head of retail banking at JPMorgan, was contacted, people familiar with the matter said. Scharf and de Molina declined to comment.

Aside from Moynihan, 50, other internal candidates include Chief Risk Officer Gregory Curl, 61. Lewis, 62, favors Curl, one person familiar with the matter said earlier this month.

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