Bill Cohan: Brian Moynihan Wanted To Be Like Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein & James Gorman

If there is one sure way for a company to break shareholders’ trust, it's not honoring the commitments it made in the past. That's what Bank of America Corp BAC did in October by offering its CEO, Brian Moynihan, the additional responsibility of being the chairman, even though a binding proposal passed by the company's shareholders in 2009 forbade it from doing so.

Now it seems the company is facing the consequences of breaking shareholders' trust. Bloomberg’s contributing editor Bill Cohan recently reported that a faith-based charity from New Jersey has filed a proposal with the bank to separate the two jobs and other shareholder groups are planning to do the same.

“Brian wanted to be more like Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein and James Gorman at Morgan Stanley, who are both chairman and CEO. He wanted that too and so the Board gave it to him and now of course shareholders are complaining,” Cohan said.

When asked about shouldn’t Moynihan’s remuneration be similar to other Wall Street executives who are both CEO & chairman if he also wants to be both, Cohan replied, "Well, if the stock performed as well as those had. I mean, Bank of America has had problems, major league mortgage-related problems and settlements as all the banks have had. So maybe he will be paid like that at one time, but now he is at least chairman and CEO and of course shareholders don't like that because it’s not shareholder friendly."

According to Cohan, most top executives on Wall Street have "egos and they like to considered in the same breadth in similar ways."