BofA Targets Turkey Day for New CEO

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (TheStreet) -- Bank of America(BAC Quote)'s search to replace CEO Ken Lewis is now likely to take until at least Thanksgiving.

Robert Stickler, a bank spokesman, said via e-mail Thanksgiving is a "target" date, confirming a front page report in the Wall Street Journal Monday.

The delay appears to be at least the second one since Lewis's Sept. 31 announcement that he would resign at the end of the year, judging from an earlier report in the Wall Street Journal, which said the board had hoped to vote on a new CEO at an Oct. 28 meeting.

"It takes as long as it takes," Stickler wrote TheStreet.com .

Since Oct. 1, the first trading day after Lewis announced his plans, BofA shares are down roughly 10%. That performance is better than that of Citigroup(C Quote) over the same time period, but worse than the rest of the bank's financial peers such as Wells Fargo (WFC Quote), JPMorgan Chase (JPM Quote), PNC Financial Services (PNC Quote)and U.S. Bancorp (USB Quote).

BofA's stock was up 3.2% to $15.53 in early afternoon action on Monday. Volume of 87 million compared to the issue's three-month daily average of 214.2 million. The shares actually took the initial news of the plans for the departure of Lewis fairly in stride, holding ground in the $16-17 range.

Two weeks after the revelation about Lewis, the stock reached a three-month intraday high of $19.10 on Oct. 15, the day before the company released its third-quarter results.

But it's been mostly downhill since then with the shares dipping as low as $14.12 last week, a level unseen since the end of July. Based on Friday's close, the stock was down nearly 27% for the past 52 weeks.