Net
- Economy's Biggest Drag Right Now Is Government
- What’s This ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Anyway? Do I Need to Worry?
- What Falling Milk Prices Say About an Economic Slowdown
- Bad Day for BATS—and for High-Frequency Trading
- Obamacare, the Individual Mandate and MMT
- A Defense of Crony Capitalism
- The Buckaroo and the Demand for Money
- New York Housing Market Could Still Collapse: Analyst
- Why the Social Security Tax Fight Is Stupid
- Bringing the Poppy Back to Wall Street
- Carl Icahn Increases Stake in Chesapeake, Demands Board Seats
- Kansas City Fed President Steps Into Jamie Dimon Debate
- Where Large Banks Fail, Regionals are Succeeding: Bove
- Facebook IPO Fiasco: 10 Things Underwriters Got Wrong
- Bank of Greece Poised to Reveal Crucial Data
- Rumors of Bank Intervention Stir Euro Markets
- Last Call: Facebook Fiasco Is Heading Toward Farce
- How to Get Fired From Goldman Sachs
- Why Facebook Stock May Have Hit a Bottom
- Facebook Forecast Scandal's Big Question: Insider Trading?
- Last Call: Facebook IPO Forensic Examination Begins
- Case Against JPM Is 'Straightforward': Attorney
- JPMorgan Facing 2007 'Kitchen Sink' Times Again?
- Bill Ackman's J.C. Penney Presentation from Ira Sohn Conference
- Last Call: Facebook Finger Pointing in Full Bloom
Call: 201-735-4638
Text Message: 917-740-8477
- Euro Zone Bank Safety Net Leaves Holes Unplugged
- JPMorgan Sells Good Assets to Offset 'London Whale'
- Roubini’s Das: Spain Needs a Bailout ‘Sooner or Later’
- Madoff Case Is Paying Off for Trustee ($850 an Hour)
- Trump Presses Obama to Release College Transcripts
- Ackman: JCPenney's Latest Sales Plunge Is a 'Bottom'
- Euro Isn’t Loved, but Few in Europe Want to Drop It: Poll
- Which Policies Could Hold Back US Growth?
- Cool Jobs: From Gold Stacker to Bed Tester
- Greece Pours $22.6 Billion Into Its Four Biggest Banks
Bank of America Follows Path of Lehman With CFO Move
Text Size 
Senior Editor, CNBC.com
 |
Oliver Quillia for CNBC.com A Bank of America trader inside the NYSE. |
Noski was brought in less than one year ago after a long and distinguished career in the management of some of America’s greatest companies—Northrup Gruman, AT&T, United Technologies, and Hughes Electronics. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and Financial Executives International, and is a past member of the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council of the FASB and the Standing Advisory Group of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. He’s served on the boards of ADP, Microsoft [MSFT
Loading...
()
] and Morgan Stanley [MS
Loading...
()
].
Basically, this guy is a stalwart of corporate America with almost unparalleled experience as a chief financial officer.
His replacement is not an accountant—he’s an investment banker.
Thompson has an MBA from the University of Virginia’s business school.
Prior to working for Bank of America [BAC
Loading...
()
], he spent the majority of his career at the securities firm Kidder, Peabody & Co. In 1996, he joined Banc of America Securities as a junk-bond salesman. From there he rose through the capital markets hierarchy to eventually become the head of Global Capital markets in July 2008. Last year, he was named chief risk officer for the bank.
In other words, Thompson is loyal soldier for Bank of America with deep roots in the culture of bond sales and trading. A very, very different animal from Noski.
Bank of America is not alone in appointing an investment banker and company loyalist to run its corporate finances. JPMorgan Chase [JPM
Loading...
()
] last year appointed Douglas Braunstein as CFO. Braustein had run JP Morgan’s investment-banking operations in the Americas and was heavily involved in the acquisitions of Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual, and—much earlier—Capital One.
Wells Fargo [WFC
Loading...
()
] recently put Tim Sloan—another MBA with no accounting experience—as CFO.
But there’s a far scarier precedent for Bank of America: the appointment of Erin Callan as CFO of Lehman Brothers. Callan was not an accountant—and had never worked in a corporate finance department.
Her appointment is now widely seen as a major misstep--perhaps a fatal misstep--for Lehman.
“In retrospect, it is easy to see the error of her ways for taking the job and of Lehman’s management for appointing her. What public company, of the size and stature of Lehman, in trouble already, can afford to have a CFO who is not an accountant? Have we not seen what happens when a CFO has no interest or aptitude for GAAP?” Francine McKenna, who blogs at Re: The Auditors, has written.
Now we’ve got three of the nation’s largest banks with non-accountants as chief financial officers. What could go wrong?
___________________________________________
Questions? Comments? Email us at
Follow John on Twitter @ twitter.com/Carney
Follow NetNet on Twitter @ twitter.com/CNBCnetnet
Facebook us @ www.facebook.com/NetNetCNBC
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes
