I find a false choice drawn here. Why is there a delicate choice to be made here because government is a shareholder and a corporation promised a bonus? Why is it a problem? The guy the bank wants to give the bonus to might leave if he doesn’t get it. Why is that a problem? This is a bank group that threatened (with its corporate bretheran) to dissolve the US economy because it was “too big to fail”. It should be cut down to size. The banks’ employees are as expendable as the factory workers who are told they no longer have health care, a 401K or a job when their management screws up. Let the man work for someone else. It is not a question of what he “deserves”. He is riding on the wrong horse. If he is so good, he can get a better, more reliable, more adept, more honest and more cooperative horse.

“Three More Bank of America Directors Resigned”

Since his retirement, BofA has moved into more and more questionable areas of finance, picking up investment companies and insurance companies in order to create a “full-service” financial institution (mimicking Sandy Weill essentially).

McColl, from McColl, SC, was the son of a country banker (and descendant of the developer of the town) and had grown up during the Depression. He was not prone to go-go finance. He knew where that had led. This is not his doing.

http://online.wsj.com/article/…..22687.html

BoA was I believe dragging its feet and apparently got a push. This article gets the rationale for the changes about right:

While the most obvious reason for forcing new board members into the large banks may be to encourage replacing their CEOs, that may not be the main reason. If the government does not have the time and personnel to constantly examine balance sheet risk or wants the perception that it is not meddling in the affairs of public companies, finding directors with extensive financial firm management may accomplish the goal of having de facto examiners in each institution.

http://247wallst.com/2009/05/1…..directors/

Very astute observation. I’ve personally observed board members hanging around for ten years, or more. What tends to happen in these circumstances is that the board members rubber-stamp whatever the executives in the company want. Oversight is, therefore, right out the window. Board turnover should be legally regulated and enforced. Not sure if five years is the right number, but it’s good place to start a discussion, IMO.

Generally speaking, having no turnover on a board of directors is a bad thing. Likewise, complete turnover — absent some very unusual circumstances — is also a bad thing. There’s no institutional memory, which makes long-term planning difficult.

I’d say we’re looking at very high turnover under a lot of very unusual circumstances, but there’s little media interest in parsing out the details.

No one seems to have noticed that the only person still serving on the Audit Committee from last year is Thomas Mays.