“We collectively, the group of us, we should have just grabbed [Paulson and other Treasury officials] and shaken them and said, ‘Look, you guys cannot do this,’ ” Thain told FCIC interviewers in a Sept. 17, 2010 interview. “In my opinion, allowing Lehman to go bankrupt was the single biggest mistake of the financial crisis.” [Bloomberg]
John Thain
John Thain Regrets Not Busting Out His Onesie, High School Wrestling Moves On Hank Paulson
By Bess Levin
No.
Meanwhile, the part of noted interior decorator/part-time beekeeper John Thain has gone to Matthew Modine. [TVS]
The smaller but top quality Art Dealers Association of America fair, The Art Show, runs at the Park Avenue Armory until March 7. Tuesday night’s opening attracted big bucks collectors, including CIT Chairman and CEO John Thain and MoMA board president Marie-Josee Kravis. Show highlights include a two- artist hanging at Galerie St. Etienne of delicate drawings by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.
Fowler’s $7,000 Geometrics Pump Collectors at N.Y. Armory Show [Bloomberg]
As you’re aware, John Thain has a substance abuse problem. The substances are fabulous chaise lounges, antique desks, and curtains that cost $1,000/yard. John’s brain is wired to think he needs these things and more to perform at the top level shareholders of the companies he’s run have grown accustomed to. Obviously this isn’t a healthy addiction JT’s struggling to overcome, and clearly he’s still in the early stages of recovery, as noted by what he told Bloomberg, on the news he’d accepted the job to run CIT Group, and the executive suit that comes with the gig.
“I think I’ll keep my office exactly the way it is,” he said.
This is something addicts say in their first go at rehabilitation, when they think they’re bigger than the drugs. They want to overcome their demons, sure, but they have no idea how truly brutal and demanding the road ahead will be. It’s not realistic to say you will categorically never use again because, statistically speaking, almost everyone has at least one or two relapses, especially when put it high risk environments rife with triggers. Such as, the hideous office of one’s predecessor, which I don’t think John actually got a look at before taking the job, and certainly not prior to speaking with Bloomberg.
On the mat, in the locker-room, whatever. The point is, talks are being had, the gigs are being considered, the onesie is dry-cleaned and ready. For this moment.
John Thain, who was Merrill Lynch & Co.’s chief executive officer before being ousted a year ago, has held talks to become the head of CIT Group Inc., the commercial lender that emerged from bankruptcy last month, according to people familiar with the matter
He knows this because the banks have said they’re going to be giving out more in stock, less in green when it comes to bonuses, which shows that they’re not tone deaf to anger. They get it, they get it so much it hurts. Especially one firm in particular, which pretty much came up with the idea little-to-no cash idea. And while we’re on the subject of Goldman? Thain loved his time there, and if he may, let everyone know that it’s a “great place to work,” obviously. One a, I don’t know, former alum with time on his hands wouldn’t thumb his nose at getting an offer from, if the price, and the lax policy on interior decorating was right. Just an FYI. Lloyd.
Thain Weighs In On Financial Reform [Dealbook]
So! Now that the government doesn’t have its foot up Bank of America’s ass, is there anyone out there who’d like to run the place? Literally no one wanted the CEO job up until yesterday, but with the TARP repayment, some people are thinking this is now a dream gig any girl would kill for, and that the board really won’t even have to go looking anymore– just sit back with their arms behind their head and wait for the candidates to come to them (everyone wants a piece of their government-less shit). Has John Thain’s window of opportunity passed now that BAC no longer needs to go slumming? And who are some dream candidates* they’ll now have the possibility of bedding?
*Who hopefully won’t have a problem with Dick Bové sending notes about how they’ll never live up to Ken Lewis with the words written in letters cut out of magazine clippings and blood)?
Bank Of America Board To Lock Themselves In A Room Sunday Night And Not Come Out ‘Til They Come Up With Someone Willing To Take Over For Ken Lewis, Maybe
By Bess LevinCharlie Gasparino reports that the Bank of America board “really, really” wants to finally pick someone to take the job of boozing it up at happy hour and then returning to the office and saying “How ’bout we do Merrill this time? That’ll be fun.” According to Gasparino, BAC is in a rush to get it done because they’re “sick of all the controversy surrounding the selection” and also maybe perhaps because Ken Lewis is out of there in like 5 weeks, so it would be nice if they could figure this out before then. A source of Chaz claims they’re going to try and do so this Sunday, though given that the board still pretty much as no idea who they want (or who’s desperate enough to take the gig) it will likely be a long night. For reasons lost on us, they’re still yet to get in touch with John Thain, who remains ready and willing.
We’ve been saying for a while that John Thain is the ideal candidate to take over Bank of America, as a) he’s unemployed and b) he could use his power to equip every men’s room with the line of urinal cakes bearing Ken Lewis’s mug he’s been working on in his spare time. Yesterday at the Reuters Global Finance Summit, JT finally got on board. He didn’t specifically name-check the bank no one wants to run but obviously the admission that he’s looking for a job in private equity “or perhaps a public company” was wink-wink for the board to get in touch, as was the “call me” gesture. (Thain further hinted that BAC is at the top of his “dream gigs” list by elaborating for any headhunters in the audience that he’s looking for a “challenge.” Read between the lines Lewis and tell JT how his ass taste.) After making sure everyone in the audience had a copy of his resume, Thain moved on to address another issue that’s been weighing on him for a while now, which is the hideous suggestion by the Times that at one point during his time at Merrill “he halted a meeting with his chief financial officer and hurled a chair against the wall, shattering a nearby glass panel.”
“That was 100 percent made up,” he said. “Do I seem like a guy who throws chairs?” asked Thain. “That conference room doesn’t even have a glass wall,” he added.
Plus, HELLO? Who here doesn’t know by now that an enraged Thain slips into a onesie and horrifies onlookers by shadow wrestling on the mat, not by throwing furniture.
Or so alleges country reporter Charlie Gasparino, in his new book (out tomorrow!), When Mooks Fail. According to CG, given that “both of these broads” had “a great pair of legs and an ass just begging for a pinch,” the comparisons were inevitable, but were nevertheless troubling to JT.
The upcoming second-quarter earnings–or, to be more precise, losses–were much higher than expected, around $5 billion. The size of the losses was in direct contradiction to just about everything Thain had said…[and] he saw his career flash before him: there would be comparisons to Alan Schwartz, Dick Fuld, and Erin Callan. He would lose the confidence of the markets, as Bear had done and as Lehman was doing. Like the other firms, Merrill had survived on the fact that it could continue to borrow money from banks and on other investors who believed they were lending money to a company that told the truth.
Thain was becoming unhinged; during a briefing in one of his finely decorated conference rooms that had been part of the $1.2 million office spending spree, people close to the firm said he completely lost his composure when an aide informed him about the size of the losses.
Normally in tense situations like these, when he felt himself losing control, Thain would take 5, strap on a onesie and work out his issues on the mat. Unfortunately, his suit was at the cleaners, and aides had mentioned to him recently that it freaked people out a bit when he would start shadow-boxing out of nowhere in a room full of colleagues.
The Post makes two bold claims this morning. The first is that John Thain feels vindicated by Ken Lewis’s resignation (which we buy, and would probably say is an understatement) but simultaneously “harbors no ill-will toward Lewis” (really? because that doesn’t jibe with the account we have of Thain smearing on red lipstick and running his finger over KL’s name, which is at the top of his “To Kill List,” nightly since January).
The second, more pressing one, is that Thain supposedly has it in his head that Lewis is going to help him “rehabilitate” his image on Wall Street. Buying this alleged dream of JT’s would of course require proof that Thain came up with the idea towards the end of a night of very heavy drinking, telling a friend “Hey! You know what I should do? I should get that guy who had the genius idea to buy the asbestos company I was running, who probably has a worse reputation than this guy [points to self] at this point, to vouch for me…what’s his name again, Ben?” before falling off his bar stool, but no matter. It’s out there, and it’s probably going to catch KL by surprise.
