For Bank of America's Dealmaker, One Deal Too Many?

CEO Lewis to Step Down Amid Firestorm Over Merrill Merger

Bank of America chief executive Kenneth D. Lewis, whose relentless dealmaking drove the nation's largest bank to heights of astonishing profitability and then to the brink of collapse, epitomizing the rise and fall of an industry, will retire at the end of December, the company said Wednesday.

The announcement capped nine months of free fall for Lewis, who was widely lauded last autumn for the apparent strength of his company and for his willingness to buy the crippled investment bank Merrill Lynch in a deal that he said was partly motivated by patriotism.

Since then, he has been sharply questioned by his shareholders, called a liar by members of Congress and stripped of his title as chairman of the company. He leaves amid intensifying state and federal investigations.

Weary and frustrated, forced to spend ever more of his time meeting with lawyers, he decided to step down, according to a person familiar with the matter.

"I decided now is the time to begin to transition to the next generation of leadership at Bank of America," Lewis said in a statement.

The company did not name a replacement but said it would do so before Lewis leaves at the end of the year.

Lewis becomes one of the most prominent financial executives to lose his job because of the financial crisis. His departure after the company has weathered the worst of

its immediate financial problems underscores a basic shift in the government's response to the crisis. As the focus has turned to reform -- not just of regulation but also of the banks themselves -- Bank of America increasingly has been forced into the spotlight.

The company that Lewis built became the nation's largest retail bank, largest retail brokerage, largest credit card issuer, largest mortgage lender -- a company that by its own estimates did business with half of the American people. But some of its most profitable products, including credit cards; its business practices, including overdraft fees; and even its sheer size are under attack by legislators who believe the company must be changed.

The Lewis vision of a financial supermarket, long seen by banking executives as the inevitable model for their industry, suddenly is under assault as an anachronism.

"This is not just the end of a CEO; this is the end of an era in American commercial banking," said Tony Plath, a finance professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. "No one has been able to create a financial institution that looks like Wal-Mart, makes money like Wal-Mart and serves the shareholders like Wal-Mart. Ken was the last great hope, and the financial supermarket could die when Ken leaves the building."

Lewis drove to Charlotte in 1969 to work for a company then called North Carolina National Bank. He was born in Mississippi and educated in Atlanta, but he came north because he heard the company had ambition. He did, too. He later said that he had always planned to be in charge someday.