Bank of America Corporation has announced the results of management and shareholder proposals at the company’s 2009 annual meeting.
All 18 directors were elected to the board by comfortable margins. In addition, management proposals regarding executive compensation and the retention of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC as the company’s independent accounting firm were approved.
Seven shareholder proposals were not approved. An eighth shareholder proposal to change the company’s by-laws to require an independent chairman was narrowly approved.
At a meeting of the Board of Directors today, after a recommendation from the Governance Committee, Walter E. Massey was elected chairman. Kenneth D. Lewis will be president and chief executive officer. The board unanimously expressed its support for Lewis to continue in that role.
Massey is president emeritus at Morehouse College in Atlanta. He served as president of Morehouse from August 1995 to June 2007. He has been a director of the board since 1998 and is a member of the board’s Audit Committee. He was a director of BankAmerica Corporation from 1993 to 1998 and currently also serves as a director of McDonald’s Corporation. Massey formerly was also a director of Delta Airlines, Motorola, BP PLC.
Prior to Morehouse, Massey held a range of administrative and academic positions. He is former director of the National Science Foundation, a position to which he was appointed by former President George H.W. Bush. The Foundation is the government’s lead agency for support of research and education in mathematics, science and engineering. Massey also served as vice president for research and professor of physics at the University of Chicago, as director of the Argonne National Laboratory, dean of the College and professor of physics at Brown University and as assistant professor of physics at the University of Illinois.
Immediately prior to Morehouse, Massey was provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at the University of California. In this position, the second most senior position in the UC system, he was responsible for academic and research planning and policy, budget planning and allocations, and programmatic oversight of the three national laboratories the University manages for the Department of Energy: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
After earning a bachelor of science in physics and mathematics in 1958 from Morehouse, Massey received his master’s and doctorate in physics in 1966 from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. Massey’s research has involved the study of quantum liquids and solids. His written work has also addressed science and math education, the role of science in a democratic society, and university-industry interactions and technology transfer in national and international settings.
Active with a range of organizations, Massey is a past chair of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB) and was a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. The recipient of more than 30 honorary degrees from institutions such as Yale University, Northwestern University, Amherst and the Ohio State University, Massey’s leadership in education includes his service as a member of the Gates Millennium Scholars Advisory Council and the National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century.
He is a fellow and past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow and past vice president of the American Physical Society, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the Council on Foreign Relations. Born in Hattiesburg, Miss., he and his wife, Shirley Anne, have two sons and three grandchildren.
During the meeting, Lewis said the company’s long-term vision for profitable growth is being advanced by the acquisitions of Merrill Lynch & Co. and Countrywide Financial Corp. despite the challenging economic environment.
D.C.