BoA, WaMu Directors Face Election Threat

Certain directors of Bank of America and Washington Mutual may face an election challenge if they do not provide a satisfactory explanation of what they did "to protect shareholders from excessive mortgage-related risk" in the past two years, according to CtW Investment Group. CtW called for the explanations, and threatened to urge shareholders to vote against the directors, in letters to BoA's Jackie M. Ward, Frank P. Bramble Sr., and Robert L. Tillman and WaMu's Mary Pugh, Stephen E. Frank, and William G. Reed Jr. The six directors sit on the BoA and WaMu committees designated to oversee risk for their respective banks, CtW said. "The meltdown of the U.S. mortgage market is among the worst financial disasters of the past 50 years," said Bill Patterson, executive director of CtW. "At the epicenter of this crisis are Bank of America, Washington Mutual, and four other U.S. banks whose failure to manage mortgage-related risk not only destroyed almost $300 billion in combined shareholder value, but also helped destabilize the global capital markets and precipitate a credit crunch that now threatens to throw the U.S. economy into recession." CtW can be found online at http://www.ctwinvestmentgroup.com.