Brian Moynihan Is Kicking Tail and Making A Name For Himself

So says Time magazine, assessing Moynihan's first three months as chief executive officer of Bank of America Corporation.

An analyst quoted in the piece says the successor to everybody's favorite executive punching bag, Kenny Lewis, is "coming out strong" and "extraordinarily impressive," while an Obama administration official who's worked with Moynihan in Washington says he's a "breath of fresh air" compared to Kenny.

To boot, one of Moynihan's most senior underlings, Todd Kaplan, a former EVP at Merrill, says his chief is doing a bang up job. It used to be "chaotic around here" but "now the place feels like Merrill did in the 1990s," says Kaplan. Meaning that folks are making bank like you read about in Oliver Stone scripts and expensing everything from their dry cleaning bills to kids' private school tuitions? No, says Kaplan, I mean "there's none of the infighting. It's terrific."

This terrific-ness is no small feat, considering that Brian inherited quite a mess from Lewis, taking over while the Merrill Lynch acquisition was being examined and reexamined and Merrill executives were sprinting for the door, deciding they weren't going to wait to see their firm fall further. Virtually an unknown banker prior to Kenny's announced (forced) departure late last year, Moynihan took a job that you couldn't give away and has seemingly already made a not too shabby name for himself.

Well done, B.