[citation needed] Thoman attended McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where he eventually earned a bachelor of arts in economics and political science, and spent the summer of his junior year working for a bank in Marseille, France.
Thoman became a longtime protégé of Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., when they first met at McKinsey & Company, and they subsequently worked together at American Express, RJR Nabisco, and IBM.
[2] When Thoman was announced as President and COO of Xerox, which positioned him as the eventual successor to Paul Allaire, this news caused the company shares to rise $2 (2.9%) to $71.75, after earlier touching a record $73.25 on the New York Stock Exchange.
However, it has been reported that many of Xerox's senior executives including Romeril and Buehler remained loyal to Allaire and viewed Thoman as an outsider.
[11][12] Allaire, Thoman, Romeril, and three other senior Xerox executives paid the SEC the sum of $22 million to settle accusations by securities regulators that they participated in a large accounting fraud that allowed the company to overstate its profits by $1.4 billion from 1997 to 2000.