He Quietly Turned Bank of America Around. Can He Do More?

Mr. Moynihan’s long tenure is not uncommon on Wall Street, partly because bank boards have valued stability atop their large, complex operations after the financial crisis. Mr. Moynihan started the same year as Morgan Stanley’s chief, James Gorman, who is preparing two potential successors. Jamie Dimon has been at the helm of JPMorgan Chase for 16 years. Last year, he got a special stock grant that could be worth $50 million if he stays through 2026, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Moynihan was born in Marietta, Ohio, one of eight children in an Irish-Catholic family. His father was a chemist for DuPont, and his mother sold insurance.

Money was tight, so Mr. Moynihan worked odd jobs. He attended Brown University, from which he graduated in 1981. As a student, he delivered newspapers to hundreds of classmates before 7 a.m., hauling sacks of papers through the dorms and collecting nickels and dimes. He shoveled snow during the blizzard of 1978 and worked as a laborer at a flooring company in Providence, R.I., to earn extra money.

Mr. Moynihan was “a guy you could completely count on,” said John LeClaire, who played rugby and shoveled snow with him at Brown. He would “never quit,” said Mr. LeClaire, a partner at the Goodwin Procter law firm in Boston, the city where Mr. Moynihan is also based. Both men would go on to marry their college girlfriends. When Mr. Moynihan turned 60 in 2019, the two friends celebrated by playing a different sport — curling.

He got a law degree from the University of Notre Dame and worked at Edwards & Angell, a corporate law firm, before joining Fleet bank in Boston in 1993. After Bank of America acquired Fleet, he became a key adviser to his immediate predecessor, Ken Lewis, during the 2008 crisis and served as general counsel.

One of Mr. Moynihan’s most important early backers was Warren E. Buffett, who invested $5 billion in the bank in 2011, betting that the chief executive could turn the company around.