Bank of America’s (BAC) annual meeting took place last week, amid major investor dissatisfaction with the way the company has been run. The contentious meeting lasted over four hours, pitting angry shareholders against BAC management. There were a number of shareholder resolutions on the ballot, and many of them received substantial support.

The shareholder resolution MMA co-filed at BAC on predatory credit card practices received a strong vote of 33.38%, 43.06% if abstentions are included. BAC is one of six companies where MMA filed the resolution; three resolutions were withdrawn due to productive dialogue and the three were kept on the ballot at BAC, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase. MMA believes that BAC’s troubles are partially due to poor credit card lending practices that created short term profits but long term pain for the company, in addition to placing further stress on customers.

Another shareholder resolution called for the separation of CEO and Chairman duties – a way to improve corporate governance and criticize the work of CEO and Chairman Ken Lewis. Lewis was forced to step down as chairman of the board after this proposal passed by 50.34% of the vote. This was the first time that a company in the S&P 500 has been forced by shareholders to strip a CEO of chairman duties, according to RiskMetrics. You can read about it here.

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