Three Bailout Kingpins Make Good in the Private Sector

Four years ago, unprecedented government bailouts of banks, insurers, and automakers prevented a U.S. economic collapse. For some of the men tapped by Uncle Sam to manage these rescue jobs, government service has paid off. Restructuring experts Jim Millstein, Harry Wilson, and Ron Bloom, who served on the Treasury Department-led overhauls of American International Group, General Motors, and Chrysler Group, have found that public service raised their profiles as they returned to the private sector. Today they’re busy with everything from merging airlines to salvaging postal worker pensions to turning around Yahoo!

A lawyer-turned-banker who’d worked at Lazard Frères for a decade, Millstein was named the U.S. Treasury’s chief restructuring officer in 2009 and assigned to oversee financial industry bailouts, focusing on AIG. When he left government last year, the lifelong New Yorker stayed in Washington, D.C., and started his own restructuring advisory and investing firm, Millstein & Co. He’s hired 25 professionals, including five transplants from Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. The hiring process involved so many meals that he put on 10 pounds, he jokes.