New York: 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 almost a four-month search for a replacement.
Thain, 54, becomes chairman and chief executive officer immediately, New York-based CIT said in a statement.
The century-old lender had been led by Jeffrey Peek, another former Merrill Lynch executive, from July 2004 until January 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 Lynch 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.
"If he can pull this off, he's going to be the king," Brian Charles, a debt and equity analyst with R.W. Pressprich & Co., said in an interview.
CIT rose 2.9 per cent to $31.65 (Dh116.15) by 10.32am in German trading, after closing at $30.75 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading on February 5.
CIT provides business loans to more than 3,000 companies and is the third-largest railcar-leasing and aircraft-financing firm in the US, according to its website. With 4,480 employees at the end of September, CIT is a fraction of the size of Merrill Lynch, which had a staff of more than 64,000 when Thain arrived.
"This is a company that's over 100 years old and its core business is lending to small- and medium-sized companies," Thain said in an interview.
"If we're going to get the US economy to continue to grow, if we're going to create jobs, then we need to have this kind of a company do well."
