John Thain says one of the first things he has to do as the new chairman and chief executive of Merrill Lynch is revamp the Wall Street bank’s risk management system. Over at Citigroup, they have launched a review of risk management processes and UBS has committed itself to improving its risk control procedures. Quite right too, you might say, given that these banks have warned they face combined writedowns of more than $20bn on their US subprime mortgage-related holdings.
One of the many qualifications Mr Thain has for the Merrill job is that he was once chief financial officer of Goldman Sachs and so in charge of a risk management operation that is the envy of Wall Street.
