Former Merrill Lynch CEO Thain Tapped to Head CIT

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Former Merrill Lynch CEO Thain Tapped to Head CIT

U.S. Department of State

Thain again: Former Merrill Lynch honcho John Thain is shown here talking about the New York Stock Exchange in 2006.

John Thain is back. The ex-CEO of Merrill Lynch, who also once held top posts at Goldman Sachs and the New York Stock Exchange, has returned to the Wall Street fold, this time as chairman and CEO of the CIT Group. However, this time, one imagines he won’t have a $35K commode at his disposal. Reuters reported Monday that Thain will bring in a $6 million salary at CIT, “mostly in restricted stock.” —KA

“DealBook” in The New York Times:

On Monday, he will start over at a humbler institution: the CIT Group, the lender to small and midsize businesses that emerged two months ago from a swift bankruptcy, The New York Times’s Michael J. de la Merced reports.

In doing so, Mr. Thain, 54, is seeking to leave behind the controversies that haunted his final days at Merrill after it was acquired by Bank of America, a deal he helped engineer to save the brokerage during the height of the financial crisis.

As CIT’s new chairman and chief executive, he will try to rebuild a company whose bet on increasingly risky businesses led it to the brink of dissolution, only to be saved at the last minute by its creditors.

CIT also bears the ignominy of being the first company in which the government realized a loss under its $700 billion federal bailout program.

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By CaptRon, February 9, 2010 at 1:22 am Link to this comment

He is known, he has been found wanting, and he gets no bailout money from taxpayers. Blackball CIT for sure since they knew what he was before they hired this fool. I sure don’t want to pay for his mistakes or anyone else either. Enough is enough.

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By hkc, February 8, 2010 at 2:14 pm Link to this comment

The usual reason given for why these CEO failures keep popping up is that the number of “qualified” candidates for the jobs is small. To be a candidate to be the CEO of a billion dollar company you need to have been the CEO of a billion dollar company. So previous failures notwithstanding Thain is highly qualified.

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By Anarcissie, February 8, 2010 at 1:33 pm Link to this comment

Nothing succeeds like failure.

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By diman, February 8, 2010 at 12:40 pm Link to this comment

It was not a commode, how unclassy of you, it was a credenza and a half million worth of renovations for his office at Merrill Lynch, just before it tanked. I just can not help but wonder how these turds of the C.E.O.s keep popping up after their disastrous failures.

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By hkc, February 8, 2010 at 10:47 am Link to this comment

I had the displeasure of being a CIT customer through my wife’s business. It was one of the most unpleasant business experiences ever. I had to get the BBB involved to get them to return an excess lease payment that they extracted from our bank account after the lease ended. And what a lease, the most exploitive thing you could imagine. The previous owner of the business had leased a credit card terminal at payments fo $50/month for 3 years. This for a terminal that typically sells for $100 or less on eBay. I could go on but it’s just more of the same.

I seriously doubt that Mr. Thain will make any difference in one of the most disfunctional corporate cultures in America. I seriously doubt if he will care.

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