Merrill Lynch CEO Spent $1,220,000 On Office Renovation As Company Prepared To Burn
Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain spent over $1.22 million to renovate his office in early 2008, just as his firm was getting ready to slash thousands of jobs, cut back on spending and dump businesses. Here's this douchebag's big-ticket tally of personal aggrandizement in the midst of financial crisis:
$800,00 to hire celebrity designer Michael Smith. He's interior-decorating Obama's White House. For $100,000. Mixing in items from Target.
$87,000 for a fucking area rug. I think I could buy all of the area rugs in stock at my local IKEA for $87,000, and have enough money left over to buy all my fellow shoppers an all-you-can eat Swedish Meatball feast. Then invest the remainder in high-yield moon-backed derivatives.
$87,000 two guest jerkface chairs
$44,000 another goddamn area rug
$37,000 six chairs for private dining room. Who has a dining room in their office?
$35,000 "commode on legs." I'm guessing that's a claw-footed toilet. Bad choice. Those gather dust underneath like nobody's business, let me tell you. Update: Actually it's a chest-of-drawers on legs. Too bad no one told me that before I took a crap in it.
$28,00 four stupid curtains
$25,000 mahogany pedestal table. I think my brother just found one of those on the curb on garbage day recently.
$24,000 "Regency Chairs." These are the kind of chairs that you use to line walls and corners but no one actually sits in and some day they end up in the Met and people are like, wow, that looks like a well-preserved, expensive, uncomfortable chair.
$18,000 "George IV Desk." You can find George I desks just as good on eBay, the advances in the later models are mainly cosmetic.
$16,000 custom coffee table. Shellacked with the blood of virgin Peruvian tribe-boys.
$13,000 chandelier in private dining room. Really fun to swing on.
$11,000 fabric for "Roman Shade." That's a euphemism for something dirty, right?
$5,000 mirror in private dining room. It's the one from Snow White.
$5,000 40 yards of fabric for wall panels. That's actually a pretty good deal. In pesos.
$2,700 6 wall sconces. Sconces are for nancies. Real titans of industry use torches.
$1,400 "Parchment waste can." Guess they were out of vellum.
Aren't you feeling good now that the government gave Bank of America a big check to buy these guys? It was vital to the national interest to prevent the collapse of the interior decorating industry.
CEO Thain's $87,000 Office Rug [The Daily Beast] (Photo: Gaetan Lee)
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Comments:
i lolled
He didn't spend that money alone, the Board of Directors probably put it in his contract.
Wall Street Journal is reporting that Thain submitted his resignation a short time ago, probably due to things like this hitting the press. Gross entitlements are fine apparently as long as it's kept private but when it starts affecting PR then all bets are off.
Don't forget- he did this back in the days before telling people you're the CEO of Merril Lynch would get you spat on.
Not long before, but before.
Meh. This doesn't bother me. I am not a Merril Lynch shareholder. Did the government give ML any bailout money?
HA nancies. That word always makes me laugh. Good call.
Wow, that's only 9+ times what we spent to buy our house last year... but our house didn't come with a claw footed crapper or "sconces"...
Is that $80,000 or $800,000 to hire Michael Smith?
Either way, he could have hired me instead, I'd only have charged him $15,000.
Funny how $800,000 for Michael Smith is completely ridiculous when referring to Wall Street...but when your boy Barack Obama hired him to renovate the White House (look it up), it's no big deal. Thain used private money for his. Barack used your income taxes.
"$5,000 40 yards of fabric for wall panels. That's actually a pretty good deal."
No it's not. Loved the article, though.
Sincerely,
A Home Economist
Yeah, but that $87,000 really tied the room together.
These old-money douches never seem to have a grasp on reality, do they?
This is the same dick who wanted to get his bonus because he was able to get ML to lose LESS money than expected.
@sleze69: They gave BofA money to purchase Merrill. Also, you may not have noticed it recently but they just gave them $20 Billion more in the past week.
I love how it's so easy to copy and paste the expense list and then put in, uhhh, stimulating comments for each one, but it's too much to ask for Consumerist not to misspell Merrill Lynch every time there's a story about it.
Regardless, this is Wall Street greed at its worst. I'm glad these guys are getting exposed for the ridiculous fleecing they've done of their paying customers as guardians of their funds. As another commenter pointed out, I'm sure it's stories like these along with his abrasive personality that got him in way over his head at Bank of America and likely lead to his departure today.
That was clearly intended as sarcasm.
Was the fucking area rug actually used for fucking? Cause then I'm totally behind this.
CNBC tore into him this morning.
You know it's going to get nasty when a reporter starts out with "we know that he is a nice guy, but...".
Busted. He's gone, gone, gone. About time too!
They referred to the article mentioned above.
Of course the rug cost $87,000. It was special.
It REALLY tied the room together.
Walter, the chinaman who peed on my rug, I can't go give him a bill, so what the fuck are you talking about?
Wow. I first read that as meaning refurbishment of OfficeS (plural) meaning the building. To spend that much on one office is the height of opulence...
He also pursued a $10 million bonus a little while back, after they went down in flames. I think even the shareholders shut him down on that.
On a similar note, I think I hate John Thain the most of any of these CEO failures.
@sleze69: The government didn't have to give ML any buyout money. They gave a second cash infusion to BoA on Jan 15 because they woudln't be able to complete the buyout of Merrill otherwise. ([www.charlotteobserver.com])
and I blew $79 at Walmart for my computer desk! *sigh*
I think I would have opted for an executive bedroom and hot secretary rather than a dining room and chandelier.
I think the $35,000 for the "commode on legs" was just the bookkeeper's shorthand for the $35,000 of petty cash that Thain pocketed for himself.
I subscribe to Lewis Black's assessment of the situation: if you're going to spend tons of money on something completely unnecessary, make sure no one else has it or has the possibility of getting it.
I'd tell you exactly what to buy but I'm sure it'd get me disemvowelled. Suffice to say it's part of Martha Stewart that's not being used and it goes well with any decor.
It's obvious that these bankers run the United States. And they are laughing at all of us as we go broke, go hungry and go without. Why aren't Americans outraged over this?
It's easy for most of us to say this guy is materialistic. And I believe he is. But last time I checked, most of the world's population lives on $2 a day or less. Most. I wonder how these people view our extravagant spending? To most of the world, I look like a materialistic scumbag for owning a condo and two cars.
The lesson I have learned in the past few years is that the meaning of "extravagant" sometimes has a different meaning depending on who you talk to. The desk I write on cost $150, more than most people in the world make in a month. I am filthy rich while being near or at the US poverty level for income.
I'm not trying to justify a CEO's extravagant spending when his company was in jeopardy. But I would imagine this guy didn't see his spending as extravagant any more than I saw my desk purchase as such.
@kimsama:
The Dude: Walter, what is the point? Look, we all know who is at fault here, what the fuck are you talking about?
Walter Sobchak: Huh? No, what the fuck are you... I'm not... We're talking about unchecked aggression here, dude.
Donny: What the fuck is he talking about?
The Dude: My rug.
Walter Sobchak: Forget it, Donny, you're out of your element!
The Dude: Walter, the chinaman who peed on my rug, I can't go give him a bill, so what the fuck are you talking about?
Walter Sobchak: What the fuck are you talking about? The chinaman is not the issue here, Dude. I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand, Dude. Across this line, you DO NOT... Also, Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.
The Dude: Walter, this isn't a guy who built the railroads here. This is a guy...
Walter Sobchak: What the fuck are you...?
The Dude: Walter, he peed on my rug!
Donny: He peed on the Dude's rug.
Walter Sobchak: Donny you're out of your element! Dude, the Chinaman is not the issue here!
@kimsama: The following conversation took place later:
BoA Rep #1: "You spent 1.2 million dollars renovating your personal office when the company was hemorrhaging money?!"
Thain: "Relax dude, nothing is fucked-"
BoA Rep #1: "NOTHING is FUCKED?! The PLANE has crashed into the goddamn MOUNTAIN!"
BoA Rep #2: "This is our problem, dude."
Does this guy get the "Pointy Haired Boss of the Year Award for 2008" for all of this garbage???
(I make attribution to Scott Adams creator of the "Dilbert" comic strip for the PHB character.)
@GuinevereRucker: Nice try, but I'm pretty sure even the richest people would look at the guy with scorn.
you blow 1 and a quarter mill on your own personal office as you watch your company go down the drain? I guarantee he got a golden parachute as they pushed him out the window...This is among the worst cases of irresponsibility and fantasy.
I can see this guy sitting at the negotiating table with BoA with a book of carpet samples. Should we invest in this company...or a 4k trashcan? Should we do something about the bad debt dragging us down? Nah, spend 5k on fabric and another 87k on 2 chairs.
Don't compare this prick to the average middle-class american
Why wasn't a modular cubicle good enough for this guy? Why did he need an office palace? Priorities kids. No integrity. When it isn't YOUR money you are spending, it is way too easy to waste money on your ego projects. Along with overpaying for Countrywide and Merrill Lynch, it is no wonder that BAC stock is at a 21 year low.
@Papercutninja: Precisely the reason they augured in businesses to start with.
And if this was his office redo can you imagine the money for private jets, country club memberships, private drivers, etc that Merrill Lynch spent on this d*ckface?
If you want a snap shot of that type of stuff read up on GE's Welch's divorce papers from the early 2000's and you'll see how muany comps that CEO's get for "free" in order to move around in the raried air of other CEO's...
lol @ jerkface chairs
He should've gone to Target. Someone should do a side-by-side of how much he could've spent.