From the category archives:

Merrill Lynch

The People’s Judge Comes Through

September 14, 2009

There is much discussion about whether anything has changed in the culture of Wall Street in this period.  Maybe it has, or maybe it hasn’t.  But at least in Judge Jed Rakoff’s Manhattan courtroom today, something undeniably did. Common sense received a well-deserved nod today in a landmark ruling from U.S. District Judge Jed S. [...]

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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: Harsh is the Tether That Does Not Bind When Shareholders Face Say on Pay

May 22, 2008

Owners of American corporations have rarely spearheaded the kind of landmark reforms the capital markets have needed to ensure public confidence or avoid the club of government regulation. They are reprising their Laodicean roles by failing to force a say on executive compensation. More than a decade ago, we described the growing trend of inflated [...]

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Cayne and Greenberg: Two Peas in a Very Dysfunctional Bear Stearns Boardroom Pod

May 8, 2008

Much as we have long faulted James Cayne for his role in Bear’s implosion, responsibility for its ultimate failure is born by many actors, including the long-time head of its executive committee, Alan Greenberg. It proves once again that boards must actually direct. In Bear’s case, there is scant evidence that its independent directors were [...]

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Outrage of the Week: When Subprime CEOs Dissemble Before Congress

March 9, 2008

Never in modern business has so much been given to so few for such colossally failed results. In just five years, these three CEOs made more than $460 million while leading their companies into the greatest losses in their history. One of them, Charles O. Prince of Citigroup, even got a bonus of $10 million, [...]

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The Scary Subprime Thinking of Angelo Mozilo and Other Overpaid CEOs

March 7, 2008

At what point will law makers, regulators and investors see that the so-called link between performance and high CEO pay is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American public? When the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform meets today on the subject of CEO pay as it relates to Countrywide, Merrill [...]

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Nominate Your Dog to the Boardroom

February 18, 2008

If the boards of Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Société Générale, Countrywide and UBS were comprised entirely of Irish setters and beagles, it is doubtful that the subprime-plagued results of recent months could have been any worse. Some of the senior staff of Finlay ON Governance have suggested that I might have given the wrong [...]

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The Ghost of Barings Haunts Société Générale, and So Do Its Weaknesses

January 25, 2008

Something has gone fantastically awry in the risk management and oversight of some of the world’s most renowned investment bankers and financial institutions. The shortcomings in their controls and governance systems that permitted multi-billion dollar losses at Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, UBS and Swiss Re, and the overall failure of top management and boards [...]

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