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The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is asking Bank of America Corp. to make consumer banking head Brian Moynihan available to testify on Nov. 17 as part of its ongoing probe of the bank's Merrill Lynch & Co. acquisition, a source familiar with the situation said.
The committee also is asking former general counsel Tim Mayopoulos and directors Chad Gifford and Thomas May to appear, the source said. The committee is probing whether the government forced the bank to complete its Merrill deal last December or whether the bank threatened to back out to win more government aid.
The committee's staff is also seeking to interview Moynihan on Nov. 11, the source said. He briefly replaced Mayopoulos as general counsel and was involved in the bank's effort to back out of the deal.
A spokeswoman for the committee's chairman, Democrat Edolphus Towns of New York, declined comment.
Moynihan is one of the top internal candidates being considered as a replacement for Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, who has announced plans to step down at year's end. At an event in California Thursday, he expressed interest in the job in an interview with Reuters.
“Anybody would want this job, it's one of the best jobs in the business,” Moynihan told Reuters. “This is a great company and I will continue to do a great job for it, no matter what the outcome.”
Bank of America has also approached outside candidates but a number of big names have declined the company's advances. One of them, Bank of New York Mellon Corp. CEO Bob Kelly, sent a memo to his top lieutenants on Wednesday reiterating his lack of interest in the job.
“There have been some press reports this week that say I might be interested in the CEO job at Bank of America,” Kelly wrote in the memo, which was obtained by the Observer. “I want to be clear: I am not interested.”
Another possibility getting some buzz on Thursday was New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO who lost his re-election bid this week. A Corzine spokesperson could not be immediately reached.
The search is being led by a committee comprised of six Bank of America board members. Three of the committee members joined the Bank of America board in the 2004 FleetBoston Financial Corp. merger. They are believed to be close to Moynihan, a former Fleet executive who remains based in Boston.
