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Aug 27 2007 2:09PM EDT

Bank of America: You Fatcats Ain't Gonna Make a Monkey Outa Me!

Jack always cringes when a CEO bares his soul. But he finds it especially painful when it happens on A1 in the WSJ.

While Ken Lewis has made lots of smart, bold moves in turning BoA into a true banking gorilla, he makes two spin mistakes in Valerie Bauerlein's profile today.

First, he telegraphs aggression in a way that will only antagonize competitors into a collective lock-down mentality.

"This is the time I think we could go for the jugular, really be disruptive and take market share," he tells an applauding group of 500 BoA friendlies.

That's a fine internal message for firing up the troops. But when a reporter is standing in the room, it's simply bulletin-board fodder for Citigroup and Morgan.

The second mistake is even more personally counter-productive for Lewis. While it can be a good thing to let people know about your modest upbringing, it raises doubts when you hail it as your driving motivation in life.

"I know that I have had a chip on my shoulder and collectively the [management] team has had a chip on their shoulder," he says. "Maybe I wouldn't call it that anymore. But there's still an intensity to move forward and to put distance between us and second place."

Then comes the class warfare.

"I had no Ivy League background, no blue-blood parents."

That kind of language sounds fine coming from a bootstrapper who now owns a dozen dry cleaning franchises. But it does not exactly drip of the executive maturity of a major player.

OK, so it's unbecoming. But is it dangerous?

Quite possibly. Because giving yourself such a strident pop-psych profile is fine when you're rolling. But the banking business is just like every other business, and rough patches will inevitably come. And when they do, all the heat focuses on the CEO. Suddenly, the boldness Lewis has shown in doing deals will be interpreted as a non-strategic recklessness inspired by childhood anxieties.

Even predecessor/mentor Hugh McColl Jr. piles on, saying Lewis, "grew up poor and didn't like it."

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