Adding to his credentials, he has already turned around a troubled institution (the exchange was reeling when he took over in 2004, after Richard Grasso was ousted because of his enormous pay packet) and he has bags of experience in the areas where Merrill is most deficient (he ran the mortgage-bond desk at Goldman Sachs before becoming the investment bank's chief operating officer).

ECONOMIST: Investment banking

Some young man in a bank lobby talked him into a dodgy bond fund that contained mortgage derivatives and lost money.

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