Shithead trading card #3: John Thain
Posted by drocolate on February 25th, 2009These days it seems like every time you check the news there is a story about a new despicable, money-vacuuming, upper-tier douchebag. Some are scamming people out of billions while some are just assholes doing asshole-ish things. It can all be a bit overwhelming.
With that in mind, I have decided to create some shithead trading cards. A set of the worst of the worst. Please print them off and use them as a reference whenever you get confused as to which common thief did what to whom when. Collect them all and trade with your friends!
Alright, here we go.
John Thain AKA Toilet Bug
John Thain is the former CEO of Merrill Lynch. You remember them? The financial services company with the bull mascot that merged with Bank of America in the midst of the post-Lehman Brothers Wall Street meltdown last year. Well that merger was John Thain’s idea, and, to be fair, it was a pretty good one. Unfortunately for Mr. Thain, every good idea he’s had has been flanked by countless terrible ones.
John Thain came to Merrill Lynch about fourteen months ago with a reputation as a fixer. A dude that could take a beaten down company and piece it back together. Dudes like this typically have a reputation and a process, and John Thain was no exception.
His process was simple:
- Get hired
- Smile a lot
- Take $1.22 million in corporate funds to decorate his office with things like a $35,000 toilet (hence the nickname)
- Shake some hands
- Merge your company with another company
And if you’re struggling with the third step in that process, it gets worse. He also purchased $131,000 in rugs, a $68,000 antique credenza (what the fuck is a credenza anyway?), $87,000 in guest chairs, a $1,400 wastebasket (WTF!!?!?) and about $800,000 in other various renovations and pointless upgrades. Wow.
But maybe he used the company’s money because he wasn’t making enough salary to deck his office out like a CEO should. Yeah, that’s bullshit. Toilet Bug was making around $87 million a year from Merrill Lynch. In fact, back in 2007 he was ranked as the highest paid executive amongst the S&P 500 companies. The guy was a heavy hitter.
But we’re just getting warmed up. So December of ’08 rolls around and Wall Street is exploding. Mr. Thain sees Lehman Brothers shut down and immediately starts negotiating to merge with Bank of America. BofA loves the idea and asks for additional government bailout funds to complete the deal. In other words, BofA sticks their neck out for this. Oh, it’s all such a delicious setup for the Toilet Bug to come in and fuck something up.
And he does not disappoint.
John Thain comes in and decides he needs to get some bonuses delivered. And quick. He takes $4 billion and hands it out as bonuses to his top douchebags. Plus, he does all of this before Merrill Lynch’s abysmal fourth quarter earnings are announced (they lost $15 billion). When Bank of America gets wind of the full shitstorm-ness of those losses they tell Thain to hit the bricks. He resigns.
There was no word on whether or not he got to keep that toilet.
Oh, and one more bonus tidbit about that $4 billion in bonuses: New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has recently started coming after Mr. Thain about the bonus money. He believes that Toilet Bug purposefully distributed it when he did because he knew about Merrill Lynch’s massive Q4 loss and wanted to “reward his people” before Bank of America came in and shat a brick. And Mr. Thain’s loyalty doesn’t end there. He is also refusing to oblige Cuomo’s request for the names of the top execs that got the bonus money, saying:
“Bonuses were determined based upon the performance and the retention of people, and there is nothing that happened in the world or the economy that would make you say that those were not the right thing to do for the retention and the reward of the people who were performing…”
Nothing happened in the world or the economy? Screw you, Toilet Bug. I’ll give him credit for being an awesome boss though.
To conclude, there are two main losers with all of this. The first one is the city of Vail, Colorado. Mr. Thain has a home there and will have lots of free time to ski now. And you know he’s the type of dude who’s always talk-yelling on his Bluetooth on the ski lift. Ugh. My apologies to all the Vailers (Vailees?, Vailites?). The other loser is Bank of America, who really inherited a shitstorm from Thain, Merrill Lynch and their bull mascot.
But you know what they say: You mess with a bull, you get bullshit.
Get your John Thain shithead trading card now!
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Complete the set:
Tags: Bank of America, bullshit, John Thain, Lehman Bros, Merrill Lynch, Shithead Trading Cards, toilets, Vail
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