CIT Taps Ex-Merrill Chief John Thain to Run 102-Year-Old Lender

CIT Taps Ex-Merrill Chief John Thain to Run 102-Year-Old Lender

By Christine Harper and Linda Shen



Feb. 7 (Bloomberg) -- John Thain, the ousted chief of Merrill Lynch & Co., was named to lead CIT Group Inc., the commercial lender that emerged from bankruptcy in December, after a nearly four-month search for a replacement.

Thain, 54, becomes chairman and chief executive officer immediately, New York-based CIT said today in a statement. The century-old lender had been led by Jeffrey Peek, another former Merrill Lynch executive, from July 2004 until Jan. 15, when Peek stepped down and board member Peter Tobin was named interim CEO.

The job restores Thain to the top of a public company more than a year after he was pushed out by Kenneth D. Lewis, then CEO of Bank of America Corp., which agreed to buy Merrill during the 2008 financial crisis. Thain inherits a company that was crippled by Peek’s foray into subprime lending before the bankruptcy. CIT still operates under constraints tied to a federal bailout in 2008 and is shut out from the commercial paper market, its traditional source of funding.

“This is a company that’s over 100 years old and its core business is lending to small- and medium-sized companies,” Thain said today in an interview. “If we’re going to get the U.S. economy to continue to grow, if we’re going to create jobs, then we need to have this kind of a company do well.”