Is BofA's Lewis Smarter Than Wall Street?
Bank of America's CEO Ken Lewis' opportunistic acquisition of Merrill Lynch for $44 billion is just the latest in a line of $100 billion worth of deals he's crafted over the last five years. One Hundred Billion. Even on Wall Street, that's a big number.
Is Lewis a genius -- or an empire-building mad man? OK, we'll rule out madness. But Harvard Business Publishing blogger Bill Taylor, in a very entertaining post, believes Lewis is headed in a direction opposite from the path many successful firms take.
"My concern," Taylor writes, "is that what makes Ken Lewis and his company tick runs counter to almost every major trend in business I've seen over the last five years -- and are at odds with what customers are looking for in the companies with which they do business."
Read Taylor's post for more insights, but here are the three trends he thinks BofA will have trouble bucking:
- Bigger is almost never better.
- Broader is almost never better.
- All the customer wants is for companies to be better.