The selection of CEO of Bank of America and simultaneously a successor to CEO Ken Lewis, is in full swing. The main confrontation in the board of directors of Bank of America is between the board members favoring Greg Curl who is a long-time BofA executive located in the bank's home city of Charlotte, N.C., and the members who favor Brian Moynihan, who came to the company after its purchase of the Boston-based Fleet Financial.

This competition has also chances to delay the selection of the new CEO. Moreover, the analysts and investor insist that the Bank must choose Lewis's successor from outside the company's ranks. The board's selection committee has already fixed either the first or the second stage of an interview for some of outside candidates this week. But one senior executive at the firm said: "So far, nobody from the outside really wants the job. That leaves the most likely scenario being an internal candidate. But the Boston guys are fighting with the Charlotte guys over Curl and Moynihan and that's holding the whole process up."

This internal fight does not affect positively the investors’ mood. Shares of Bank of America initially rose sharply after CNBC first reported on September 30 Lewis's intentions to leave the job by the end of the year amid numerous investigations into his purchase of Merrill Lynch last year during the height of the financial crisis. But after reaching the top in mid October, shares have come down to levels below where they were before the resignation announcement. The reason of the stock's decline is surely an uncertainty over Lewis successor and speculation that BofA's troubled loans may force the bank to raise more capital, according the analysts.

All the searches of the firm for the outsiders with banking experience who would like to become Lewis’s successor, for example like Robert Diamond of Barclays Capital or Robert Kelly of Bank of New York turned out to be unsuccessful because of the reduce of all candidates, making again the insiders Curl and Moynihan the most likely choice.

Meanwhile, the rift over the board members favoring the two internal candidates Curl and Moynihan continues to grow, underscoring the deep cultural divides between the mebers of the old and the new generation at the company.