Bank of America CEO’s Secret Word Game Stuns Analysts

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan has been quietly running an unusual game during the bank’s quarterly earnings calls, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report. The longtime executive deliberately works rare, old-fashioned words into his prepared remarks, leaving Wall Street analysts reaching for a dictionary.

A Word Game Only a Few Know About

Only a handful of Bank of America employees are reportedly in on the game, in which someone selects an unusual word shortly before a call for Moynihan to weave into his statement. Words he has used include “gainsay,” meaning to dispute something as false, and “concomitant,” meaning accompanying. On one call, he described himself as not experiencing “fantods” — an old term for nervousness. A bank spokesperson told the Journal that Moynihan enjoys intellectual challenges, playfully describing the habit itself using more elevated vocabulary.

When the Words Cause Confusion

The unusual diction hasn’t always translated cleanly. During a July call, Moynihan reportedly described the Iran conflict using a word meaning winding or complex. Different transcription services interpreted it in conflicting ways — one rendered it as meaning unproductive, another as meaning difficult to manage, while a third transcript scrambled the term into something unrecognizable. Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo reportedly called Moynihan’s style an intellectual flex, contrasting it with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s more plainspoken approach.

Moynihan, who studied history at Brown University before earning his law degree at Notre Dame, joined Bank of America in 2004 and became CEO in 2010. Today, he leads a bank with a market capitalization of roughly $443 billion — one that, apparently, still leaves room for some linguistic mischief on quarterly calls.