Wall Street CEOs Who Embarrassed Themselves

5 Jimmy Cayne

Jimmy Cayne served as the CEO at Bear Stearns from 1993 to January 2008. He left the company when its shares fell 50 percent over a year. Two among Bear’s greatly leveraged hedge funds also had pathetic days in 2007 and the bank lost $40 billion in mortgage bonds, while Jimmy being at the helm. After Jimmy Cayne quitted his job, in early 2008, the company got sold to JP Morgan, that too for a price less than the value of its office space.

6 Ken Thompson

Ken Thompson of Wachovia purchased the home lender Golden West Financial for $25 billion in 2006 amid the housing bubble and made other sub-prime and consumer investments that brought out huge multi-billion dollar losses for the company. Though Thompson had 32 years of service at the firm, it asked him for a retirement in June 2008 as the stock prices were still struggling. After stepping out of Wachovia, he joined at BNC (Bancorp of North Carolina) in 2011 as a member of the Board of Directors.