From the category archives:

John Thain

John Thain Back in Business, Decorators Cheer

February 8, 2010

The announcement that John Thain is taking over as CEO of CIT means one thing for certain: he has an office that will need decorating.  In the past, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch has been something of a one-man stimulus package for interior decorators and antique dealers.  Since the  forced sale of that once-fabled institution and Mr. [...]

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The Disingenuous Fleeing to the Indefensible

January 27, 2009

Former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain has tried to explain his spending spree of more than a million dollars on antiques for his office, in December of 2007.  He claims it was a “very different economic environment.”  How different might that be? He was brought in to replace Stanley O’Neal –who had just presided over [...]

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Outrage of the Week: The Real John Thain Revealed

January 25, 2009

The sudden fascination on the part of the former CEO of Merrill Lynch with expensive antiques paid for by beleaguered shareholders illustrates once again that sound judgment is the most underrated and unevenly dispensed attribute among modern leaders today. A year ago, at the beginning of 2008, investors in U.S. financial stocks had already begun [...]

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Outrage of the Week: The Directors Who Slumbered While Merrill Lynch Steered into its Subprime Iceberg

January 18, 2008

The fact that Merrill’s risk committee did not function shows that this company was governed by a board that failed utterly in its duty to investors. The magnitude of the losses was staggering on its own: nearly $10 billion for the final quarter of 2007. That was on top of the $2.3 billion loss for [...]

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