BofA's Mystery CEO Candidate

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Bank of America's (BAC) Chief Risk Officer Gregory Curl, reportedly one of two leading internal candidates to replace outgoing CEO Ken Lewis, would be an unusual leader for such a large, mainstream company.

Curl has been an extremely important executive at Charlotte, N.C.-based BofA, but he has flown mostly under the radar. He came on board in 1996 after the then NationsBank acquired Boatmen's Bancshares of St. Louis. Until assuming his current post in June, Curl's main responsibility was to evaluate potential acquisitions, first as an adviser to former CEO Hugh McColl Jr. and then to Ken Lewis, when Lewis took over in 2001.

According to his biography on BofA's Web site, Curl was a distinguished student who served as a naval officer in the Mediterranean and the Middle East from 1970 to 1974, after which time he joined Boatmen's as a commercial loan officer. He then left Boatmen's to work as a special assistant to Senator John C. Danforth from 1976 to 1978 before rejoining Boatmen's, where he worked in many capacities, including vice chairman and chief operating officer. Curl grew up in a small town in Missouri, and likes to grow tomatoes, according to a Bloomberg report written in September 2008.

Deals that Curl oversaw include BofA's $35 billion purchase of MBNA in 2005 and its $21 billion acquisition of Chicago's LaSalle Bank in 2007.

Perhaps Curl's crowning achievement was the bank's $3 billion investment in China Construction Bank in 2005. It was a pet project of Curl's, and a highly unusual one for Lewis, who according to Rochdale Securities analyst Dick Bove has always disliked doing business outside of the United States. BofA added to its stake in China Construction Bank last year, but then began selling part of its holdings this year to shore up its capital position.