With the sale of half of its stake in China Construction Bank, Bank of America and chief executive Brian Moynihan have excised another bit of former chief executive Ken Lewis' legacy from the bank.

In the five years before his 2009 departure, Lewis made a string of acquisitions that created much of the behemoth bank known today. Moynihan is on a drastically different mission: shrinking the bank and selling what he calls non-core assets.