. >> brian moynihan, sally krawcheck, tom montague, barbara desoer, joe price.n lewis has his way, he's going to be in there for a year, maybe longer. people at b of a, they are not ruling out an outside replacement taking over for ken lewis in that period of time. i mean, ken lewis wants to stay, wants to repay the t.a.r.p. money and return the place back to profitability. these are people close to ken lewis. if we show that list, i can point to negatives, positives obviously, but negatives on every one of them. sally was one of the best brokerage analysts i've ever reported on. she wasn't a very good cfo of citigroup and i'm not saying this isn't what most analysts say. joe price, he's the cfo of i guess b of a right now. brian boyny han was a lawyer in the past. a lot of people say there's the chuck prince principle right there. tom montag, a guy that ran merrill lynch's trading desk when they lost the $15 billion. barbara desoer, i don't know much about her. >> she's probably thrilled about that. >> right. but what people are telling me, these are all very s

banking, tom montag, head of global markets, and now global corporate and investment banking, barbara desoer who is head of home loans and insurance and ceo joe price are the five horsemen in the race to succeed lewis. now, in a statement b of a didn't name any specific candidates or say when the 62-year-old lewis might step down. the bank says lewis maintains the board's full support. twice named bankerer of the year, shareholders stripped the 40-year-old b of a chairman of his title this spring over bank of america's acquisition of merrill lynch. lewis said woe like to stay on until the charlotte-based bank repays the tarp money it owes the government. separately, without admitting or denying any guilt, b of a is settling charges with the s.e.c., over $3.6 billion in bonuses paid to merrill employees last year. the s.e.c. charging contrary to public statements the b of a had agreed to pay 5.8 billion in bonuses as part of its agreement to buy merrill lynch. the s.e.c. says the bonus pool and merrill's failing financial health made this material information but b of a failed to disclose it

barbara desoer, someone i don't know much about, but she's apparently in this mix as well. so what senior people at b of a are telling me, bob, is those five people -- one of those five people are likely if something major happens to succeed ken lewis. now, the question is when does that come? and i've been asking that question now for the last couple days. and what they say is this. listen, he wanted to leave on a good note. obviously, this s.e.c. settlement is not the best note to leave on. and that means return to sort of standard profitability for the firm. repay the tarp money, get out frunder the government's shadow and return -- b of a into more of a self-contained unit, not a government-run bank. when that happens, you know, people talking about a year. now, i will say this, bob, and here's the caveat here. when you see a story like this with this lack of disclosure, you know, sometimes the centrifugal forces which could move out the ceo faster. remember, they had board member changes recently. this is kind of a dicey situation. but i'm telling you that's -- clearly