Bank of America may have just answered the question investors have asked for years: who comes after Brian Moynihan? According to the Wall Street Journal:
Bank of America appointed two new co-presidents and elevated the title of its chief financial officer Friday, moves that identify them as the most likely potential successors for longtime Chief Executive Brian Moynihan.
The bank tapped Dean Athanasia, who leads the consumer and commercial banking operations, and Jim DeMare, who runs the global markets division, as the co-presidents of the entire bank.
They will take over responsibility for the company’s business lines, and the individual business heads will report to them, according to an internal memo the bank released from Moynihan.
CFO Alastair Borthwick was given the title of executive vice president. Since the 2023 banking crisis, Borthwick has had to deal with the bank’s giant portfolio of underwater bonds and unrealized losses. The new role will come with additional firmwide responsibilities, including Bank of America’s global real-estate portfolio.
While the new titles cement what has long been assumed, that these three are the most likely current CEO candidates, whether any of them gets the job as head of the nation’s second-biggest bank is far from certain.
Moynihan is among the longest-serving executives on Wall Street, having taken over the bank in 2010 when it was still in trouble from the 2008 financial crisis. There have long been questions about who was in line to take over for him someday.
NLPC has for years criticized Moynihan’s leadership. In 2023, we filed a shareholder proposal asking the company to curb his power and separate his Chair and CEO roles. Then, in 2025, we circulated a report to the bank’s shareholders urging them to oppose his reelection to the board of directors. Our complaints include his support for the World Economic Forum, and the debanking of conservatives, among other issues. We’ve also highlighted reports that Moynihan hoped for a high profile position in a hypothetical Kamala Harris administration .
Unfortunately he doesn’t plan to leave Bank of America any time soon, which not everyone is happy about, according to the New York Post:
But the Brown University alum also stressed that he planned to remain in the top job until at least the end of the decade, having taken over the reins in 2010 to steer BofA through the fallout of the global financial crisis.
That’s a prospect that — as previously reported by The Post — hasn’t pleased everybody on Wall Street.
“It’s nice to want to continue as the CEO for five more years, but there’s increasing pressure to improve performance and stock price,” said Mike Mayo, banking analyst at Wells Fargo.
Areas in need of improvement include the corporate and investment bank, the private bank and Merrill Lynch, Mayo added.
The Post’s Charlie Gasparino reported last October of internal rumblings among senior BofA staff over the perception that Moynihan brought any overly-conservative, lawyerly approach to running the company.
“Frustrated staffers point to a plodding management style and aversion to take the right kind of risk, particularly on the trading desk to support big corporate clients and their banking deals,” Gasparino wrote.
