John Thain: NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE

For an idea of how different things are at the New York Stock Exchange these days, peek inside the office of CEO John Thain, the M.I.T. grad and former president of Goldman Sachs who had to be talked into taking the job after former CEO and chairman Richard Grasso's bitter departure amid an excessive-pay flap and charges of board cronyism. Grasso, a passionate stock-exchange lifer, famously littered his office with several hundred treasured mementos from the companies whose shares are traded at the exchange. The more clinical Thain, 49, displays mainly his own collection of modern art. But he's putting his...