Faces of the financial crisis: Where are they now?

Stan O’Neal and John Thain presided over the demise of Merrill Lynch, perhaps the nation’s most iconic investment bank, but their careers after the crash followed radically different paths.

O’Neal’s was an all-American story. A rare example of an African-American making it big on Wall Street, he advanced from General Motors assembly line to CEO of “Mother Merrill.” O'Neal, who joined Merrill from GM in 1986, was appointed CEO in 2001. The firm reaped huge profits in his first five years but ran into trouble by investing heavily in subprime mortgage bonds, then deepening its position as other firms began pulling back in 2006.

He precipitated his downfall by seeking to sell Merrill to Wachovia and Bank of America before first informing the board. Ironically, less than a year later, Thain was lauded for selling to Merrill Lynch to Bank of America.

O’Neal never got the chance to run another company, but his fall was cushioned by a golden parachute payout estimated at $161.5 million. Just 56 at the time of his resignation, O’Neal went on to serve as a director at Arconic, an Alcoa spinoff. He joined Alcoa's board in 2008.

Thain entered the saga in December 2007, when Merrill Lynch tapped him to replace O'Neal. The choice seemed a natural, given his role shepherding the New York Stock Exchange through its initial public offering in 2006.

Thain’s tenure was short, though. Days after Merrill’s sale to BofA closed on Jan. 1, 2009, he resigned under a cloud, upended by revelations of a million-dollar office renovation, as well as billions paid out in eleventh-hour bonuses to Merrill personnel. On top of that, Merrill's losses for the fourth quarter of 2008 had come in significantly higher than expected.

Though Thain's reputation took a beating, he landed on his feet. CIT hired him as CEO in 2010. Before stepping down in 2016, he returned the company to profitability and engineered its acquisition of OneWest Bank. Last fall, he joined Uber's board following the departure of founder and CEO Travis Kalanick.

The push to save Morgan Stanley began in earnest when another venerable Wall Street investment bank, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008.

“I knew that Morgan Stanley would be next in line,” then-CEO John Mack later recalled.

During the harrowing week that followed, Mack implored Morgan Stanley employees to remain focused on their clients. He desperately tried, in vain, to line up emergency financing from Chinese or Japanese investors.

And he stared down Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, who were pressuring him to arrange what would have been a fire sale, in order to avoid the bloodbath they feared was coming when markets opened on Monday, Sept. 22.

In a 2009 speech, Mack recalled what he said at the end of a tense phone call with Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner: “I have the utmost respect for the three of you. What you do for this country makes you patriots. But I have 45,000 employees. I won’t do it. I’ll take the firm down. Click.”

On the evening of Sept. 21, Morgan Stanley got the lifeline that it needed. The Fed announced that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs would become bank holding companies, instantly providing the two firms with new sources of liquidity.

Mack stepped down as Morgan Stanley’s CEO on Jan. 1, 2010, and he relinquished his chairmanship two years later.

More recently, Mack has served as a board member at several fintech companies, including LendingClub and Lantern Credit.

There is perhaps no detail more telling about Jamie Dimon’s tenure at JPMorgan Chase than the fact that, a decade after the crisis, he’s still at the helm.

He is the rare crisis-era CEO who, barring any unforeseen surprises, will have the opportunity to someday leave on his own terms.

Still, while Dimon’s title has remained the same, the $2.6 trillion-asset company he runs has changed immensely over the past decade. That’s due, in part, to a pair of acquisition JPMorgan made as the housing market was crashing.

With the assistance of the Fed, JPMorgan in March 2008 bought Bear Stearns, as the storied investment bank was on the brink of collapse. Six months later, it acquired the failed Washington Mutual Bank.

Those deals came back to bite Dimon, as the problems JPMorgan inherited were a big reason the bank in 2013 wound up paying a record $13 billion settlement with regulators over the sale of faulty mortgages.

Dimon’s reputation was bruised in other ways, as well. In the spring of 2012, for instance, JPMorgan’s $6 billion London Whale trading loss became a symbol of risky behavior and lax controls at big banks.

But Dimon survived — and kept his company profitable throughout the tumult. Over the past year, JPMorgan has embarked on a new phase of growth, announcing a 400-branch expansion in several major East Coast markets. It also launched a digital-only bank for millennials.

Dimon has also come to embrace his role as the industry's elder statesman, taking the lead in several public policy debates as the head of the Business Roundtable, an influential corporate lobbying group.

Amid chatter about his political ambitions, Dimon, 62, made it clear in January that he’s staying put at JPMorgan for five more years.