Mr. Fixit

I am happy to join the VivosVoco team, and hope that my contributions will prove accretive to shareholder value.

Sort of like John Thain, the CEO of Merrill Lynch. His contributions to his prestigious and storied company's bottom line include a 70% drop in the company's stock's value since he took over. But what he'll really be remembered for is keeping Merrill out of bankruptcy, by selling it to Bank of America.

Or maybe he'll be remembered for his solid-gold parachute:

Thain, hired last December following the ouster of Stan O’Neal, stands to collect about $11 million on the vesting of free shares if he doesn't stay after the sale.

Any payouts triggered by a change in control are on top of a $15 million signing bonus awarded to Thain last December.

The payouts wouldn't be much of a raise compared with the $20.2 million Thain got during his last year at Goldman Sachs in 2003.

That should buy him a solid gold house and rocket car, and leave him enough left over to eat salads made from $50/hr lettuce.

"I doubt Thain understood the magnitude of risk and exposure on the Merrill's balance sheet,'' Bove said. "I don't think anyone could have done a whole lot.''

Yeah, he probably didn't really understand the whole "balance sheet" thing when he signed on to this job - it's pretty tough to get your head around all those acronyms and stuff. But I'll bet he understood to the penny the part of his contract detailing the compensation he'd receive when he left.