BofA Ex-Chief Heading to L.A.

Former BankAmerica Corp. Chief Executive David Coulter, ousted after his San Francisco bank’s 1998 takeover by NationsBank Corp. of Charlotte, N.C., will return to California in another banking shake-up, this one at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Coulter, 56, had been chairman of J.P. Morgan’s $14-billion-a-year investment bank since May 2002, overseeing its asset management and private-equity operations as well. J.P. Morgan said Tuesday that he would move from New York to Los Angeles at year-end to run the private-equity, or buyout, businesses -- JPMorgan Partners, One Equity Partners and Corsair -- and drum up corporate clients.

“It’s time for me to move on to the next stage,” Coulter said, describing the reduced duties and move as his decision. He will work from a Century City office, 10 minutes from a home he and his wife, Susan, bought last year.

J.P. Morgan also announced Tuesday that its chief financial officer, Dina Dublon, would be replaced by a corporate-banking executive, Michael Cavanagh, at the end of the year. The bank is reshaping its executive suite after its July purchase of Bank One Corp., whose chief executive, James Dimon, is now president of J.P. Morgan and the presumed successor to its chairman and CEO, William Harrison.

Coulter is perhaps best known for the huge severance package he received after the BofA-NationsBank merger created the current Bank of America Corp. in Charlotte. The golden parachute, which has been valued at $50 million to $100 million and includes $5 million a year in pension payments, drew protests from shareholder advocates, causing BofA in 2002 to give shareholders veto power over large severance payments.

Coulter in 1999 joined Beacon Group, an investment firm that was acquired by Chase Manhattan Corp. a year later. He headed consumer operations at Chase, which merged with J.P. Morgan & Co. in late 2000, and held that job at J.P. Morgan Chase, the second-largest U.S. bank, before taking the high-profile role heading its investment bank.

Still, he said, “I had never considered the move to New York with Chase to be permanent.”