Victims & Victors

The fallout from the subprime meltdown has affected homeowners, bankers, and investors, and now has settled on some of the top corner offices of Wall Street. On November 14, John Thain, CEO of NYSE Euronext since 2006 and the New York Stock Exchange since 2004, was named chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch. Thain succeeds Stan O’Neal, who retired October 30 under the cloud of the firm’s write-down of $7.9 billion related to its CDO and U.S. subprime mortgage portfolios, and the resulting loss of $2.3 billion for the third quarter. Before going to the NYSE, Thain, 52, was president and COO of Goldman Sachs, which is about the only big bank on Wall Street to have seen the subprime trainwreck coming and got off the tracks in time.