Meredith Whitney thinks Ken Lewis has “done a great job”. While Whitney has been right about practically everything under the sun over the last two years she is horribly wrong in saying this. Bank of America would be in FDIC receivership if it wasn’t for federal funding. The bank has received $163B in funding or more than 3.5 times the banks current market cap. I still believe B of A is technically insolvent if they would mark their balance sheet properly, but we all know that is unlikely to happen any time soon. CountryWide Financial and Merrill Lynch would certainly be in bankruptcy proceedings if it weren’t for Ken Lewis and his penchant for overpaying. Bank of America stock is down 75% since Lewis took over in 2001. He has won multiple banker of the year awards and is widely known as a merger genius, but so far it appears as though the only thing Ken Lewis has done a “good job” of is destroying the bank that bears the name of this great country….
Mr. Roche is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Discipline Funds.Discipline Funds is a low fee financial advisory firm with a focus on helping people be more disciplined with their finances.
He is also the author of Pragmatic Capitalism: What Every Investor Needs to Understand About Money and Finance, Understanding the Modern Monetary System and Understanding Modern Portfolio Construction.