John Thain and the $35,000 toilet

John Thain hired Michael L. Smith, the designer who is redoing the White House for the Obama's, to redo his office at Merrill Lynch. Thain's cost for redoing his office was $800,000. The cost of redoing the White House? $100,000.

Not only did John Thain flush Merrill Lynch shareholders down the drain, and not only did he oversee $100 billion of losses, we now find out that the most overpaid and over-compensated CEO in America now spent $35,000 a toilet. John Thain's "commode."

John Thain spent $87,000 for the rug in his office, $68,000 for the credenza, and $87,000 for a pair of guest chairs and $11,000 for the coffee table.

He spent $37,000 for the six chairs in his private dining room, and $5,000 for the mirror that he could primp himself in.

And he spent $35,000 for the "commode with legs" that he could sit on, after he ate his dinner.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-22/john-thains-87000-rug/

John Thain, typified everything that is wrong with the financials with his egalitarian, and smug sense of entitlement. In fact John Thain was the highest paid CEO in the S&P in 2007, raking in $83 million dollars, and after he was paid these numbers he destroyed Merrill Lynch.

Let's just take a look at some of his statements, and let them stand for themselves.

Last December Thain raised $6.6 billion, and then said he's comfortable with his capital position.
http://www.ml.com/index.asp?id=7695_7696_8149_74412_86378_87784

He then did the same thing in January raising another $6.6 billion, and then saying he's comfortable with his capital position.
http://www.ml.com/index.asp?id=7695_7696_8149_88278_88282_88849

On April 8, John Thain said Merrill didn't need to raise any more capital, as the $24 billion write down was enough.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/24006943/site/14081545/

Less than 9 days later, Thain was saying Merrill wouldn't raise capital by selling stock but by selling preferred shares, even though they had $82 billion of excess liquidity. (Sort of like Geithner's response to his tax problems.) Merrill's CFO begged to differ from his boss:

"I wish he didn’t say that," Merrill Chief Financial Officer Nelson Chai said, believing the firm still has balance sheet issues and may need to write down further losses.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/24182971

So Merrill raised another $7.3 billion.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article3799330.eceSo
Then Merrill sold $9 billion of stock,but Thain said that they wouldn't of had to raise the capital, but this time they had to, since they sold their CDO's to Lone Star!

Merrill executives knew by late June that it would be forced to take huge write-downs — again — in second-quarter earnings, bringing the total write-downs over a year to more than $40 billion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/business/05merrill.html?_r=1&dbk&oref=slogin#

Today, finally John Thain finally gets canned from Merrill Lynch. We know that John Thain always lied to investors about the state of Merrill Lynch. Now it looks like he did the same thing to Ken Lewis of BAC.

After every capital raise at Merrill Lynch, John Thain always said that was enough.

Today we can finally say that Wall Street has had enough of John Thain.

The only question left is, "When is his $35,000 toilet going to appear on eBay?"