40 Fun Facts About Merrill Lynch

Which animal appears in the famous Merrill Lynch logo that its bankers fought to keep after a 2009 takeover?

Bull branding was due to be scrapped by Merrill's new owner in 2009, until its executives lobbied to keep it and won the right to print it on their business cards.

Which firm agreed to buy Merrill Lynch for about $50 billion in stock at the height of the 2008 financial crisis?

Bank of America struck the deal over a single weekend in September 2008, paying a 70 percent premium to Merrill's last share price; the takeover closed in January 2009.

On the same weekend in September 2008 that Merrill Lynch sold itself, which rival Wall Street bank went bankrupt?

Lehman Brothers' collapse made rivals fear Merrill Lynch would be next: some banks had considered halting their trading with Merrill if Lehman went under.

Merrill Lynch co-founder Charles Merrill engineered the 1926 merger that created which American grocery chain?

Safeway grew to more than 3,500 stores by 1931 with Merrill Lynch financing its takeovers of other chains, and Charles Merrill stayed on as its largest shareholder.

Merrill Lynch was the first customer for the market-data terminal created by which New York City mayor?

Michael Bloomberg sold Merrill Lynch 20 terminals and a 30 percent stake in his young company for $30 million; in 2008 Merrill sold its last 20 percent back for a reported $4.43 billion.

James Merrill, poet son of Merrill Lynch's co-founder, built an epic poem from messages received through which device?

A Ouija board supplied two decades of séance messages for The Changing Light at Sandover, a 560-page epic in which James Merrill gave voices to the dead, W. H. Auden among them.

Until 1938, the official name of Merrill Lynch carried which punctuation mark between its two founders' surnames?

A comma split the two surnames from 1915, when Edmund Lynch's arrival turned Charles E. Merrill & Co. into Merrill, Lynch & Co., until the firm dropped it in 1938.

Merrill Lynch's founders became friends after sharing a room at a boarding house run by which organization?

The YMCA rented Edmund Lynch a room in New York in 1907, and newcomer Charles Merrill moved in with him while he hunted for a place of his own.

Which Merrill Lynch chairman went to Washington in 1981 as Treasury Secretary under President Ronald Reagan?

Donald Regan joined Merrill Lynch as a trainee in 1946 and ran it from 1971; in Washington he later swapped jobs with James Baker to become White House chief of staff.

A grandson of Merrill Lynch founder Charles Merrill led the group that took over which baseball team in 1993?

San Francisco Giants boss Peter Magowan stopped a planned sale to a Florida group, signed Barry Bonds and pushed through the team's privately funded ballpark.

Merrill Lynch's huge network of financial advisors, some 15,000 strong, earned which Wall Street nickname?

The Thundering Herd label goes back to the 1940s, when a merger left the firm with a name so long that outsiders also called it We the People.

Charles Merrill of Merrill Lynch was a major investor in the five-and-dime chain that became which discount retailer?

Kmart was the later name of the S. S. Kresge Corporation, one of several young chain stores, J. C. Penney among them, that Merrill Lynch helped to finance.

Merrill Lynch bankers were convicted in 2004 over a deal to buy Nigerian power barges from which energy company?

Enron booked about $12 million in profit from the barge deal, which prosecutors called a sham; an appeals court threw out the Merrill bankers' fraud convictions in 2006.

Merrill Lynch received $6.8 billion in 2008 from the US government's bailout of which giant insurance company?

AIG had sold Merrill protection on its investments, so part of the taxpayer money sent to rescue the insurer passed straight on to the brokerage.

Which famously quiet president did a Merrill Lynch founder warn about stock speculation before the 1929 crash?

Calvin Coolidge did not act on the warning; the firm, sure a crash was coming, told its own clients in 1928 to sell stocks and pay down their debts.

Which Merrill Lynch chief apologized after spending $1.22 million of company money redecorating his office in 2008?

John Thain's bill included $131,000 for rugs, $68,000 for an antique credenza and $1,100 for a wastebasket; he repaid the full cost after it came to light in 2009.

Which radical group accidentally blew up a New York townhouse once owned by Merrill Lynch founder Charles Merrill?

The Weather Underground set off its own dynamite by accident at 18 West 11th Street on March 6, 1970; Merrill had owned the Greenwich Village house in the 1920s.

Merrill Lynch paid $400 million in 1998 over risky investments that had bankrupted which California county?

Orange County lost $1.69 billion on treasurer Robert Citron's bets and filed for bankruptcy in December 1994; Merrill settled without admitting liability.

Henry Blodget, a Merrill Lynch analyst barred from the securities industry for life, later co-founded which news site?

Business Insider began in 2007 as Silicon Alley Insider with Blodget as chief executive, four years after regulators charged him over misleading dot-com research.

Who became the first African-American chief of a major Wall Street firm when he took over Merrill Lynch in 2002?

Stanley O'Neal grew up on his grandfather's Alabama farm and was a supervisor at a General Motors plant before Harvard Business School; he resigned in 2007 as the firm's losses mounted.

Charles Merrill opened the Wall Street firm that became Merrill Lynch in the same year that which war began?

World War I began in the summer of 1914, the same year Charles E. Merrill & Co. opened for business at 7 Wall Street; the Lynch name was added in 1915.

Merrill Lynch paid $1.3 billion in 2006 for First Franklin, one of America's largest lenders of which kind of loan?

Subprime mortgages from First Franklin were meant to feed Merrill's bond-packaging business; it stopped lending through the firm in March 2008, about fifteen months after the purchase.

In 1964 Merrill Lynch became the first American securities firm to set up a presence in which Asian country?

Japan became a far bigger market for Merrill in 1998, when it took over the retail operations of the failed Yamaichi Securities.

Merrill Lynch was once called the Catholic firm of Wall Street because most of its executives shared which ancestry?

Irish Catholics filled most of Merrill's top jobs, and the firm's culture of job security was nicknamed Mother Merrill.

Merrill Lynch built a permanent Investment Information Center inside which busy New York City landmark?

Grand Central Station travelers could pick up the firm's educational brochures there, part of a postwar push that also included pioneering investment seminars for women.

In 2006 Merrill Lynch swapped its fund-management arm for a 49.5 percent stake in which asset manager?

BlackRock, founded in 1988 by Larry Fink and seven partners, took in Merrill's fund business in a deal that halved the holding of its earlier big shareholder, PNC.

Which New York attorney general published private Merrill Lynch emails in 2002 that contradicted its stock research?

Eliot Spitzer's release of the emails pushed Merrill to pay $100 million and promise to separate its stock research from its investment banking.

The merger that added Fenner to Merrill Lynch's name brought in a cotton-trading brokerage from which southern city?

New Orleans was home to Charles Fenner's firm, then America's second-largest brokerage; Confederate president Jefferson Davis had died in the Fenner family home there.

Merrill Lynch founder Charles Merrill and longtime chief Winthrop Smith both studied at which Massachusetts college?

Amherst College later received Merrill's Southampton estate, The Orchard, as a gift, and its science center carries his name.

Pathé Exchange, the film company Merrill Lynch took control of in 1921, was later absorbed by which Hollywood studio?

RKO Pictures bought the studio in January 1931; the year after Merrill Lynch took its stake, Pathé had released the landmark documentary Nanook of the North.

Merrill Lynch's longtime 34-story headquarters stood between the Hudson River and which New York City landmark?

World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001 badly damaged the building's roof, yet six weeks later it was the first tower in its complex to be reoccupied.

Merrill Lynch's ruinous losses of 2007 and 2008 came largely from complex securities known by which abbreviation?

CDO stands for collateralized debt obligation; in July 2008 Merrill sold a batch once valued at $30.6 billion for just $1.7 billion in cash plus a loan to the buyer.

The man hired in late 2007 as Merrill Lynch's final chief executive had just finished running which institution?

New York Stock Exchange chief from 2004 to 2007, he had earlier been president of Goldman Sachs, and he brought former exchange colleagues with him to Merrill.

In 1941 Merrill Lynch became the first firm on Wall Street to publish which kind of document?

An annual report was an unusual step for a private partnership: Merrill Lynch did not sell shares to the public until 1971.

Mercury Asset Management, bought by Merrill Lynch for about $5.3 billion in 1997, was a fund manager from which country?

United Kingdom finance knew Mercury well: it began as the fund arm of bankers S. G. Warburg, and at its peak more than half of the FTSE 100 companies used it.

Which 1977 Merrill Lynch product let brokerage customers write checks and use a Visa card, alarming the banks?

Cash Management Account holders could spend straight from a money market fund; the banking industry went to court to stop the product and failed.

Losing money in late 2007, Merrill Lynch sold shares to Temasek Holdings, the state investment arm of which country?

Singapore's fund returned in the summer of 2008, agreeing to put in another $3.4 billion as Merrill sold off hedge funds and securities to cut its exposure.

Which partner's surname did Winthrop Smith's replace in 1958 at the end of Merrill Lynch's long official name?

Beane came from Alpheus Beane, whose brokerage had merged in during 1941; the swap honored Smith, who had run the firm since 1940.

Merrill Lynch twice sold its Canadian retail brokerage business, in 1990 and 2001, to an arm of which bank?

CIBC bought Merrill's Canadian private-client operations in 1990, then picked up Midland Walwyn in 2001, three years after Merrill had paid to get back into Canada.

Merrill Lynch's last chief executive was a senior economic adviser to which 2008 presidential candidate?

John McCain counted him as a personal friend, and he was tipped as a leading candidate for Treasury Secretary had the Republican won the White House.