Bank of America Corp. chief executive Brian Moynihan's pay for 2011 fell sharply, the bank said Friday, reflecting a year of shaky financial results, sliding shares and criticism from customers, investors and politicians.

The CEO is being awarded a stock grant worth about $5.9 million for his performance last year, though his ultimate payout will depend on how the company performs going forward, the Charlotte bank said in a securities filing. Moynihan did not receive an additional cash award, and his base salary, $950,000, did not increase from the year before, a person familiar with the situation said.

His total pay for 2011 - his second year in the bank's top role - could reach about $6.9 million, down from $10 million in 2010.

Details about Moynihan's bonus were part of a series of Securities and Exchange Commission filings Friday, disclosing stock grants for the bank's top eight executives worth a total of about $34.5 million.

That includes stock awards of about $4.2 million and $8.1 million for co-chief operating officers David Darnell and Tom Montag, respectively, and a grant worth about $6.2 million for chief financial officer Bruce Thompson.

The bank will disclose more information about executive pay in its proxy filing next month.

Montag, a former Merrill Lynch executive who runs the Wall Street side of the bank, also earned more than Moynihan in 2010. He was the bank's highest-paid employee that year, earning $16 million, including $14.3 million in performance-based stock.

It's not unheard of for other executives to make more than a CEO on Wall Street, where traders can reap huge bonuses.

Bank of America's board awarded the executives' compensation after a year of mixed results. The bank posted a fourth-quarter profit of $1.6 billion for common shareholders as it continued to shed assets, streamline operations and rebuild core businesses in a slowly improving economy.

That marked a turnaround from the same period in 2010, when the bank lost $1.6 billion, due in part to losses associated with its 2008 acquisition of troubled mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. - though some analysts worried the overall results were too muddled by one-time gains and losses to paint an accurate picture of future profit potential.

The bank also turned a small profit for the year: $85 million attributable to common shareholders, up from a loss of $3.6 billion in 2010.

But the year also was characterized by questions about Moynihan's leadership after a series of public-relations missteps, from an ill-timed debit-card fee to a pledge in early 2011 to boost the bank's penny-per-share dividend, a move regulators later denied.

The bank's stock price, meanwhile, slid nearly 60 percent in 2011. It has rallied so far this year, closing Friday at $8.02, down slightly from the previous day's close.

Some senior executives who report to Moynihan received cash bonuses for 2011, the person familiar with the situation said. But the biggest portion of their incentive pay comes from performance-based stock grants, the person said.

Those shares, doled out on Wednesday, vest only if the bank meets certain performance targets. The shares cannot be paid out until March 2015 and expire if they are not earned by the end of 2016, the bank said.

Other shares executives received will vest in 12 monthly installments and be paid out in cash, based on the company's stock price.

The numbers are the latest sign of a modest bonus season at big banks, following a year of uneven financial performance and stock declines. Bankers' pay remains in the public spotlight, too, after a year that saw public outcry over Bank of America's proposed $5 debit-card fee, which the bank later scrapped, and other moves.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., the New York lender that edged out Bank of America last year as the nation's largest bank by assets, disclosed last month that CEO James Dimon received a 2011 stock bonus valued by the company at $17 million, the Wall Street Journal reported recently.

That's the same as his 2010 award, despite a record profit last year.

Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, meanwhile, saw his 2011 stock-based pay fall by about half, to $5.1 million, the Journal reported, citing January securities filings.

It remains to be seen what this year's bonus season holds for rank-and-file employees at Bank of America, who typically receive bonuses in February and March for work from the previous year.

Bank of America has told investment bankers to expect 2011 pay that averages 25 percent less than a year earlier, due to salary and bonus reductions, Bloomberg News reported recently, citing people with knowledge of the talks.

The bank also is freezing base salary levels and limiting cash bonuses to $150,000 for some investment bankers, Bloomberg said. The cap on cash payments applies to those getting as much as $1 million in total year-end bonuses, with the rest coming in shares of the lender.

Bank of America is doling out more of its bonuses in stock, too. It announced in January that its executives would consider issuing about $1 billion in common stock to certain employees as part of their 2011 cash bonus.