Now: McColl got back to work and started McColl Partners, a Charlotte-based boutique investment bank that focuses on midsize businesses.
Later, he opened two art galleries, one in Charlotte, the other in New York City.
In 2006 he formed a $100 million private-equity fund called Falfurrias, named after a town in Texas near the ranch where he raises longhorn cattle. "Everybody wants to have longhorn steer on their ranch," he says. "It's the Texas version of the pink flamingo."
McColl, 75, reports that his successor as Bank of America CEO, Ken Lewis, who took heat for the cost of acquiring Merrill Lynch, is doing fine. "He was picked on a lot," says McColl. "I think later people will take a different view of that acquisition." And he gives high marks to current CEO Brian Moynihan. "He's tough," McColl says. "And I think he's very orderly in his thinking."
By Ellen Florian
NEXT: Percy Barnevik
