John Thain, the former Merrill Lynch chief executive who left the bank following its merger with Bank of America last year, has returned to finance at the helm of embattled lender CIT Group. Here, Financial News revisits the fortunes of other bank chiefs who left Wall Street during the crisis.

Thain has been appointed as the new chief executive of US-based CIT, an important lender to small businesses that came close to collapse in 2009, several years after it expanded into sub-prime mortgages and student lending.