Deep in the Wall Street Journal's front-page profile today of Bank of America CEO Kenneth D. Lewis is a mention of the fact that Lewis has gone through four CFOs in six years.
That includes Alvaro G. de Molina, who had a 17-year career at the bank, but stayed in the CFO slot only 14 months.
The gist of the Journal's mention about CFO turnover apparently is that Lewis is tough on CFOs and other executives. To be fair, de Molina tries to counter that impression, though I'm not sure the image he conjures up quite does the trick: "If you called him, you didn't even go to the bathroom because you knew he'd call you right back."
(That bit of praise just left me hoping that Lewis is as terse as he is responsive).
However, my larger impression about that factoid — four CFOs in six years — was that it wasn't really convincing evidence of anything. Lewis might be the "great boss" that de Molina describes or he might be "difficult to work for," as the Journal implies. But the sad fact is, an average CFO tenure of 18 months is far from unusual these days. After all, de Molina's famous reason for leaving was simply that Sarbox was making his job "a little less fun."
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