Kenneth D Lewis

Bank of America Corp. owes Kenneth D. Lewis, who is quitting as its chief executive at year's end, $68.8 million on his way out the door. Lewis accumulated that amount in his 40 years of work at Bank of America and predecessor companies. Topping the list of assets is a lump-sum pension benefit that was valued at $53.2 million in the bank's last public report on his holdings. That report, in a proxy filing this year, also said Lewis, 62, had $10.6 million in deferred compensation coming his way. And he will keep 305,000 shares of restricted stock that will vest over the next few years, which, at today's stock price of $16.34, is worth about $5 million.

A few months ago, mighty Bank of America Corp. and its chairman and chief executive, Kenneth D. Lewis, looked like the saviors of the financial system. Now the giant is foundering, and Lewis could be fighting to keep his job. The company's stock price has plunged 66% since Jan. 1 and slipped below $5 a share this week, hitting a 25-year low.

Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Kenneth D. Lewis said Tuesday that he wanted to start repaying $45 billion in federal bailout funds next month, after the government's "stress test" of his bank, and to give back the remainder as soon as the nation's wobbly financial system is stabilized. In interviews at The Times, Lewis defended Bank of America's much-criticized acquisitions of Countrywide Financial Corp. and Merrill Lynch & Co. as strategically sound in the long run.

Bruised by a year of financial catastrophe, some bank shareholders are out for revenge as the corporate annual meeting season approaches -- with Bank of America Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Kenneth D. Lewis a prominent target. His critics, who are calling on shareholders to vote him off the company's board at its annual meeting April 29, cite the bank's moves last year to acquire two struggling firms, mortgage giant Countrywide Financial Corp. and brokerage powerhouse Merrill Lynch & Co.

Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis told members of Congress on Thursday that he was not coerced by the government into going ahead with the acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co. late last year after he learned of huge new losses at the brokerage giant. But some members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee were openly skeptical. "We don't buy it," said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.). Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) was equally incredulous.

Kenneth D. Lewis, who became a focus of public and political outrage while presiding over Bank of America Corp.'s stunning fall from grace in the financial crisis, is stepping down as chief executive at the end of the year. Lewis, who had helped build the company into the nation's largest bank, faced widening criticism in particular for the company's acquisition of faltering giant Wall Street brokerage Merrill Lynch & Co. He joins a line of once widely admired CEOs who quit or lost their jobs in the wake of huge losses stemming from the mortgage meltdown, including the heads of Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros.