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'One of my first priorities at Merrill Lynch was to strengthen the firm's balance sheet, and today we have made great progress towards that by bolstering our capital position through these investments and our announced sale of Merrill Lynch Capital'.
December 24, 2007 - Thain in a statement when Merrill announced a $6.2 billion capital raising.
'These transactions make certain that Merrill is well-capitalized'.
January 15, 2008 - Thain in a statement after selling $6.6 billion of preferred shares to a group that included Japanese and Kuwaiti investors.
'We're very confident that we have the capital base now that we need to go forward in 2008'.
January 18, 2008 - Thain as quoted by the New York Times
'Today I can say that we will not need additional funds. These problems are behind us. We will not return to the market'.
March 8, 2008 - Thain in an interview with France's Le Figaro newspaper.
'We have more capital than we need, so we can say to the market that we don't need more injections. We can confirm that we have tackled the problem'.
March 16, 2008 - Thain in an interview with Spain's El Pais newspaper.
'In 2007, we lost $8.6bn after tax, but we raised $12.8bn dollars in new capital. We raised significantly more capital than we lost. And we did that on purpose so that we could say to the marketplace that we raised more than enough capital. We replaced all the capital we lost. We have plenty of capital going forward, and we don't need to come back into the equity market. The goal is to maintain our current ratings. No more capital raising; I'm sure we have enough capital'.
April 4, 2008 - Thain in an interview with Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
'We deliberately raised more capital than we lost last year ... we believe that will allow us to not have to go back to the equity market in the foreseeable future'.
April 8, 2008 - Thain to reporters in Tokyo, as reported by Reuters.
'Today on a pro forma basis we have about $44 billion of equity capital, which actually isn't very much below the all-time high that Merrill ever had. And our philosophy about this is that we are well-capitalized. We're comfortable with our capital position. We, like everyone else, are deleveraging our balance sheet'.
June 11, 2008 - Thain on a conference call hosted by Deutsche Bank.
'Right now we believe that we are in a very comfortable spot in terms of our capital'.
July 17, 2008 - Thain on a conference call after posting Merrill's second-quarter results.
On Monday 28th July, Merrill announced that it was taking a $8.5bn capital infusion in order to strengthen its balance sheet, and Thain's credibility is clearly on the line. Detailed below are some market participant comments on this issue:
'(We) think management has damaged its credibility'.
Charlie Peabody, analyst, Portales Partners (Reuters)
'The financial firms obviously think investors are utter fools. And, for a while, they were correct. They suckered people into buying into this mess the whole way down'.
Barry Ritholtz, CEO independent quant research firm Fusion IQ (MarketWatch)
'Thain is just an unbelievable manager. If anyone's going to come out of this smelling of roses, he will'.
Aneet Deshpande, head of trading, Allegiant Asset Management (Reuters)
'While it's a tough pill to swallow, and it's created a lot of dilution, I think it has created some good clarity....(Merrill Lynch's) fundamental franchise is really pretty good'.
Winthrop Smith Jr, the son of a Merrill founder, and a man who enjoyed a 30-year career at the firm (Reuters)
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