At an annual investors meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Wednesday evening, Bank of America’s shareholders voted to strip Kenneth D. Lewis of his chairman title. According to a “New York Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/business/30bank.htmlxth&emc=th report, the angry investors that filled the auditorium held Lewis accountable for what they considered a series of missteps that forced the bank to accept not one, but two government bailouts.
Lewis will remain as Bank of America’s president and CEO. According to a company statement on its Web site detailing the results of the annual meeting, the board of directors expressed unanimous support for Lewis to continue in that role.

Loyal employees and a handful of resolute stakeholders voiced their steadfast support of Lewis, but in the end 25 million – or 50.4 percent – of the bank’s shareholders chose to remove him as chairman. Robert Stickler, a bank spokesman, told the _Times _that some large shareholders had told the bank they voted in favor of Lewis’ removal because of corporate governance concerns, not because they did not support him.
Named the 2008 Banker of the Year by the industry trade publication American Banker, Lewis has been at the helm of Bank of America since 2001, and has been largely credited with growing the company into one of the nation’s largest financial institutions. His most notable recent actions include overseeing the bank’s acquisitions of Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch & Co. last year.
Bank of America’s board of directors elected Dr. Walter E. Massey to replace Lewis as chairman. Massey is president emeritus at Morehouse College in Atlanta, and has been a member of the board since 1998.
Bank of America has received $45 billion in government funding so far, and some analysts are speculating that regulators could decide it needs as much as $70 billion more to satisfy the recent bank stress test requirements. Bank of America reported a $4.2 billion profit for the first quarter of this year, but over the last 12 months, its stock has fallen 78 percent.