How a company staved off financial doom.

The events of last weekend will forever be seared in Wall Street history: To have not one but two major brokerage firms nearly fail at the same time has, to my knowledge, never happened before, not even after the crash of 1929, and it's not likely to ever happen again.

Going into the weekend, Merrill's stock had already fallen to $17. By Sunday afternoon, with Lehman's last hope to save itself having fallen through, it seemed as though the resulting market carnage might take Merrill right down to zero.

Once again, however, Thain played his weak cards wisely: Instead of wasting another precious day explaining to investors why the market was wrong and the firm's balance sheet was strong, Thain acted. And this time, he fixed Merrill's problem once and for all.

(Photograph of Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain by Mario Tama/Getty Images.)