CHARLOTTE
As Bank of America's directors search for someone to replace Ken Lewis, local leaders wonder if the new chief executive will have any ties to the Carolinas -- and what it will mean for Charlotte if not.
Some bank insiders worry that the new commander might be less committed to keeping the base here. They fear that the corporate offices could be uprooted to New York or Boston or another city if the new chief wanted to make a dramatic statement of change -- or simply didn't want to live here.
Charlotte and state leaders say they are determined to keep the hometown bank in its hometown, especially after losing Wachovia's headquarters last year. Gov. Bev Perdue has been talking with bank officials, shareholders and community leaders about the bank's future since Lewis announced two weeks ago that he plans to retire by year's end, Perdue spokeswoman Chrissy Pearson said.
Lewis will get no salary or bonus for 2009 under an agreement with the government pay czar, who is scrutinizing compensation at bailed-out banks.
Kenneth Feinberg, the U.S. Treasury Department's special master for compensation, suggested that Lewis should get no pay for the year and Lewis agreed, Bank of America spokesman Robert Stickler said yesterday.
Lewis will pay back about $1 million he has received so far out of a $1.5 million annual salary.
"He will write a check to the company," Stickler said.
Bank of America is one of the most important engines driving Charlotte's economy, employing 15,000 workers and supporting a raft of smaller businesses. It is the sole reason that Charlotte can still claim to be the country's No. 2 banking center, a title that has defined it for years.
If the headquarters were to shift, experts say they expect that the bank would keep a substantial presence and number of workers here, and that just a handful of top executives would move to the new base. But the city would lose prestige and decision-making power.
U.S. Rep. Mel Watt, a Charlotte Democrat and member of the House Financial Services Committee, said he hasn't heard anything about Bank of America leaving beyond the concerns of local city leaders -- worries he attributed to insecurities from the city.
Watt said that the concerns might say more about Charlotte than about Bank of America.
"It's a reflection of how we sometimes view ourselves as a city -- the poor little Southern victim," he said. "We forget the advantages Charlotte has.... We just have to get over the victim mentality."
For most of this decade, Charlotte has worried that the bank would move to New York, the home to most of its big-bank peers. In 1998, the concern was over a switch to the West Coast, when the bank -- then called NationsBank -- bought BankAmerica in San Francisco.
Lewis, born in Mississippi and educated in Georgia, said multiple times that the headquarters wouldn't move under his watch -- including the day last fall when he bought Merrill Lynch, which is based in New York.
In 2006, when he unveiled plans for the bank's new tower across the street from its 60-story corporate center, he said that the building would make it "much harder for the next CEO to move the headquarters."
At the start of Lewis' tenure as chief executive in 2001, he took steps to bring a number of top lieutenants to Charlotte, but that management team has spread out again in recent months. In the latest structure, five of 11 top executives are based in Charlotte, including Lewis. Before the Merrill deal, five of nine were here.
The question now is whether the headquarters location is even an issue for the board of directors.
Recently revamped under the government's watch, the board has more financial expertise and no members with strong Carolinas ties except Lewis. Three of the current 15 are holdovers from Boston-based FleetBoston Financial, which the bank bought in 2004.
Directors have not returned calls for comment.
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