Ken Lewis' $53 Million Goodbye

For all of you fretting about how outgoing Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis is likely to make ends meet, rest easy. CNN Money reports that Lewis will likely walk away with $53 million in retirement benefits when he leaves the bank after eight years at the helm. "That should give him about $3.5 million a year in pension payouts for the rest of his life—at a time when people who bought the stock when he took the reins in 2001 are underwater on their investments," it notes, turning all populist. Lewis' shocking departure raises one pressing question: "Who will lead Bank of America out of this mess?" writes the New York Times. It notes that, "for all the names being floated, few banking executives have the skill and experience to run Bank of America, a coast-to-coast giant with nearly $1 trillion in deposits—and a bunch of giant-size problems," including some pretty daunting legal challenges both for the bank and Lewis himself. Talking of banks and lawyers, the Wall Street Journal reports that a court-appointed examiner looking at the Lehman Bros. bankruptcy is investigating whether the "Federal Reserve improperly cut in front of other creditors owed money in the $613 billion bankruptcy case."

All the biz press are making sense of Comcast's merger talks with NBC Universal. Under the plan being discussed, the cable giant would merge its programming assets with NBC Universal and kick in around $7 billion in cash to claim a 51 percent stake in the broadcaster currently owned by General Electric and Vivendi. If the deal goes through, Comcast "could hold the most significant collection of cable television assets in the world" and a major U.S. broadcaster to boot, writes the NYT. The discussions mark the latest "big shift in television, with cable channels becoming more valuable than broadcast networks and companies rethinking their strategies for making and delivering content to consumers in a digital era," writes the WSJ, adding: "Together, [GE and Comcast] would create a mammoth television and movie company in an industry beset by competitive and technological upheaval."

Let's stay on the merger beat to report on an increasingly contentious struggle in the mining world. Yesterday, U.K. regulators told Xstrata to “put up or shut up” in its bid to acquire rival miner Anglo American, the Financial Times reports. Anglo already rebuffed an informal all-share merger offer from Xstrata, and now the Takeover Panel has given the Anglo-Swiss company a deadline of 5 p.m. on Oct. 20 for "Xstrata to make a formal offer or walk away for six months." Combining the two companies would create a "powerhouse in products including coal, diamonds, platinum, chrome and zinc with a market value of roughly $80 billion," writes the WSJ, but Anglo American is hoping to play for time in order to revive its flagging fortunes without being swallowed up in the process.

Japan is on the brink of losing its coveted status as the world's second largest economy. OK, maybe not tomorrow or even next week, but, as the NYT writes, "many economists expect Japan to cede its rank ... sometime next year, as much as five years earlier than previously forecast." There's far more than economic bragging rights at stake. China's eclipsing of Japan could hasten that nation's economic decline, given that China would likely capture Japanese export markets just as Japan's national debt increases and its aging work force slows down national productivity. Then there's the geopolitical equation, with the reversal of fortunes likely to affect the already delicate diplomatic and military balance in the region, notes the NYT.

Finally, Twitter CEO Evan Williams was having a few problems selling his family home until he decided to tweet: "Buy my loft ... It's a steal!" Since then, news of his desire to move the property has gone viral, writes CNN Money. Move over Craigslist?