John Thain to repay $1.2 million for $87,783 rug and other office decor

Posted Jan 26th 2009 10:25AM by Peter Cohan
Filed under: Bank of America (BAC)

John Thain may look like superman, but he's only human. According to my brother William D. Cohan's article in Fortune, Thain contributed mightily to his efforts to get himself fired following the takeover of Merill Lynch by Bank Of America (NYSE: BAC). Now Thain is trying to salvage his reputation by offering to repay Bank of America for the $1.2 million he spent to decorate his office.

Thain's career suicide involved five key steps:

Thain tossed out his Merrill deputies Greg Fleming and Robert McCann;
He was late to disclose some $15.31 billion in trading losses that may have derailed the deal if they had been disclosed earlier;
He took a year-end vacation at Vail and signed up for this week's Davos fest (against his boss, Ken Lewis's advice);
He paid $4 billion in bonuses to Merrill workers before the deal closed -- although Bank of America knew about them so Thain should not get all the blame for these;
He spent $1.2 million to redecorate his office.

Now Thain is going to try to partially reverse the damage from the last item in his career suicide process.

Let's review some of the $1.2 million worth of items Thain bought for his office:

An $87,783 pair of guest chairs
An $87,783 area rug
A $68,167 19th century credenza
A $1,404 parchment waste basket

Once he reimburses Bank of America, I wonder if Thain will get to take all these items out of his office and put them in his basement. He should probably donate them to the Museum of American Finance -- they would make a great exhibit along with Dennis Koslowski's $6,000 shower curtain.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College. Portfolio recently published his eighth book, You Can't Order Change: Lessons From Jim McNerney's Turnaround at Boeing. He has no financial interest in Bank of America securities.

Tags: bac, inthenews, merrill lynch, MerrillLynch, thain

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Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)

2-01-2009 @ 10:59PM

George S said...

John Thain and Ken Lewis should be investigated because of the $4 billion dollar executive bonuses prior to BOA takeover...then a couple of months asked for a $20 billion dollar bailout money.. This is stealing from taxpayers.

2-03-2009 @ 1:28AM

Ang said...

jmann16399 said...
Government is just giving it away....why not get your share. I'm so disgusted with the way business and government is run that I'm trying to sell my home in the midwest and move to Mexico.

________________________________
If you move to Mexico, an American company will hire you.

What the heck...beaches...tropical weather...and employment prospects! Why haven't we ALL thought of this?????

Also, Bank of America makes it real easy to send money to Mexico, so you can always ship your corporate funds back home. Thumb your nose at all the suckers who stayed home and paid the bailout taxes.

jmann, you're a genius. Sell your home at today's great rates and use the currency exchange rate to start a nest egg in your new homeland. Then recruiters from American corporations will come and offer you a better job than you could have hoped for as a previous citizen. Hmmm....

2-06-2009 @ 8:55AM

Joe Moe said...

That's fine and dandy--for the time being.

Next, we'll take yer head, yer ass, plus both yer nuts, all on a silver platter, too... And jump on it, will ya? While at it, turn in all yer credit cards--on the double!

Btw, BOA, you owe everybody in the room a whole lot more than just $78--didcha forget the bailout from us all? We'll talk interests and late fees and service charges later.

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