Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, doing business as Merrill, and previously branded Merrill Lynch, is an American multinational investment management and wealth management division of Bank of America. Along with BofA Securities, the investment banking arm, both firms engage in prime brokerage and broker-dealer activities. The firm is headquartered in New York City, and once occupied the entire 34 stories of 250 Vesey Street, part of the Brookfield Place complex in Manhattan. Merrill employs over 14,000 financial advisors and manages $2.8 trillion in client assets ($3.4 trillion for Global Wealth and Investment Management). The company also operates Merrill Edge, an electronic trading platform that had $500 billion in assets from 4 million clients as of January 2025.
After suffering a wholesale funding and liquidity crisis during the 2008 financial crisis, in September 2008, on the same weekend as the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, Merrill, then led by John Thain, agreed to be acquired by Bank of America. The acquisition was completed in January 2009. The company was merged into Bank of America Corporation in October 2018, with certain Bank of America subsidiaries continuing to carry the Merrill Lynch name, including the broker-dealer Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith. In 2019, Bank of America rebranded the unit to "Merrill".
Merrill Lynch rose to prominence on the strength of its network of financial advisors, sometimes referred to as the "thundering herd", that allowed it to place securities it underwrote directly. In contrast, many established Wall Street firms, such as Morgan Stanley, relied on groups of independent brokers for placement of the securities they underwrote. It was once known as the "Catholic" firm of Wall Street and most of its executives were Irish Catholics.
History
Founding and early history The company was founded on January 6, 1914, when Charles E. Merrill opened Charles E. Merrill & Co. for business at 7 Wall Street in New York City. A few months later, Merrill's friend, Edmund C. Lynch, joined him, and in 1915 the name was officially changed to Merrill, Lynch & Co. At that time, the firm's name included a comma between Merrill and Lynch, which was dropped in 1938. In 1916, Winthrop H. Smith joined the firm.
In 1921, the company purchased Pathé, which later became RKO Pictures. In 1926, the firm acquired a controlling interest in Safeway Inc., transforming the small grocery store into the country's third-largest grocery store chain by the early 1930s.
In 1930, Charles E. Merrill led the firm through a major restructuring, spinning-off the company's retail brokerage business to E. A. Pierce & Co. to focus on investment banking. Along with the business, Merrill also transferred the bulk of its employees, including Edmund C. Lynch and Winthrop H. Smith. Charles Merrill received a minority interest in E.A. Pierce in the transaction. Throughout the 1930s, E.A. Pierce remained the largest brokerage in the U.S. The firm, led by Edward A. Pierce, Edmund Lynch and Winthrop Smith proved to be one of the most innovative in the industry, introducing IBM machines into the business's record keeping. Additionally, by 1938, E.A. Pierce controlled the largest wire network with a private network of over 23,000 miles of telegraph wires. These wires were typically used for orders.
Despite its strong position in the market, E.A. Pierce was struggling financially in the 1930s and was thinly capitalized. Following the death of Edmund C. Lynch in 1938, Winthrop Smith began discussions with Charles E. Merrill, who owned a minority interest in E.A. Pierce about a possible merger of the two firms. On April 1, 1940, Merrill Lynch, merged with Edward A. Pierce's E. A. Pierce & Co. and Cassatt & Co., a Philadelphia-based brokerage firm in which both Merrill Lynch and E.A. Pierce held an interest. and was briefly known as Merrill Lynch, E. A. Pierce, and Cassatt. The company became the first on Wall Street to publish an annual fiscal report in 1941.
In 1941, Merrill Lynch, E. A. Pierce, and Cassatt merged with Fenner & Beane, a New Orleans–based investment bank and commodities company. Throughout the 1930s, Fenner & Beane was consistently the second largest securities firm in the U.S. The combined firm, which became the clear leader in securities brokerage in the U.S., was renamed Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane.
Post-war years
In 1952, the company formed Merrill Lynch & Co. as a holding company and officially incorporated after nearly half a century as a partnership. On December 31, 1957, The New York Times referred to that name as "a sonorous bit of Americana" and said "After sixteen years of popularizing [it], Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Beane is going to change it—and thereby honor the man who has been largely responsible for making the name of a brokerage house part of an American saga," said about Winthrop H. Smith, who had been running the company since 1940. The merger made the company – Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. – the largest securities firm in the world, with offices in over 98 cities and membership on 28 exchanges. At the start of the firm's fiscal year on March 1, 1958, the firm's name became "Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith" and the company became a member of the New York Stock Exchange.
In 1964, Merrill Lynch acquired C. J. Devine & Co., the leading dealer in US Government Securities. The merger came together due to the death of Christopher J. Devine in May 1963. The C. J. Devine & Co. partners, referred to as "The Devine Boys", formed Merrill Lynch Government Securities Inc., giving the firm a strong presence in the government securities market. The Government Securities business brought Merrill Lynch the needed leverage to establish many of the unique money market products and government bond mutual fund products responsible for much of the firm's growth in the 1970s and 1980s.
Deregulation and expansion Amidst the closure of numerous American brokerage firms in the 1970s due to deregulation and declining trade activity, Merrill hired affected brokers. In 1978, Merrill Lynch bought White Weld for $50 million. In the 1980s, the firm began to finance hostile takeovers and leveraged buyouts. It also expanded into home mortgage bonds.
Rise to prominence During the late 1980s, Merrill Lynch underwent a massive structural shift to challenge the dominance of traditional merchant banks by building a global institutional powerhouse. This transformation was spearheaded by a select group of visionary executives who pivoted the firm away from its domestic "thundering herd" reputation, which was defined by a network of 15,000 financial advisors, toward becoming a leader in international debt and fixed income markets. The strategic drive into Europe was led by Donald Roth, the Chair and Chief Executive of Merrill Lynch Europe, who was a central figure in devising the "global bond" concept that allowed securities to trade simultaneously in multiple clearing systems worldwide. Working alongside him was Caleb Watts, who played a critical role in structuring international equity and debt offerings to bridge the U.S. and European markets.
Under this high-level leadership, Nicholas Glinsman acted as a primary driver for the firm's specific role in the Euro Convertible bond market. Glinsman was credited with being singularly responsible for establishing Merrill in this niche, executing the largest Euro convertible issues of the decade and bridging the gap between European corporate needs and global investor appetite. While the firm was scaling in London, it also targeted the Asia-Pacific region to create a 24-hour trading capability, with Glinsman serving in this regional expansion as the Head of Fixed Income Sales to Australasia while operating out of London, New York, and Sydney.
During this same period, Herbert Allison and Edson Mitchell were instrumental in transforming the firm’s global capital markets business, moving Merrill Lynch toward the aggressive, risk taking culture that eventually allowed it to surpass rivals like Salomon Brothers in profitability. A critical part of the firm's rise was the decision to build its European government bond business from the ground up rather than acquiring a local player, an initiative driven by Glinsman and a management team that included other rising institutional leaders. These leaders turned the division into a highly profitable powerhouse that competed directly with sovereign debt specialists, providing a foundation for future success that eventually saw Glinsman ranked number one in the world for Alpha capture by major global hedge funds later in his career. This collective push, involving strategic thinkers like Roth and market builders like Glinsman, solidified Merrill Lynch's reputation as the premier institutional bond house before the decade closed.
1990s: International moves In 1990, the company sold its Canadian private client operations to CIBC Wood Gundy.
In November 1997, the company acquired Mercury Asset Management, one of the largest investment firms in Europe, for about $5.3 billion in cash.
In June 1998, Merrill Lynch re-entered the Canadian investment business with its purchase of Midland Walwyn Inc. At the time, Canada was the seventh-largest market for personal investment.
In December 2001, Merrill Lynch sold Midland Walwyn to CIBC Wood Gundy.
Investment in TMS Entertainment (2003) In 2003, Merrill Lynch became the second-largest shareholder of Japanese animation studio TMS Entertainment. In a report to the Finance Ministry, the Merrill Lynch group said it had acquired a 7.54% stake in TMS by purchasing 3.33 million shares. Merrill Lynch purchased the stake purely for investment purposes and had no intention of acquiring control of the firm's management.
Subprime mortgage crisis
In November 2007, Merrill Lynch announced it would write-down $8.4 billion (~$ in ) in losses associated with the subprime mortgage crisis, and terminated E. Stanley O'Neal as its chief executive. O'Neal had earlier approached Wachovia for a merger, without prior Board approval, but the talks ended after O'Neal's dismissal. Merrill Lynch named John Thain as its new CEO that month. In his first days at work in December 2007, Thain made changes in Merrill Lynch's top management, announcing that he would bring in former New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) colleagues such as Nelson Chai as CFO and Margaret D. Tutwiler as head of communications. Later that month, the firm announced it would sell its commercial finance business to General Electric, and would sell shares of its stock to Temasek Holdings, a Singapore government investment group, in an effort to raise capital. The deal raised more than $6 billion.
In July 2008, Thain announced $4.9 billion fourth-quarter losses for the company from defaults and bad investments in the ongoing mortgage crisis. In one year between July 2007 and July 2008, Merrill Lynch lost $19.2 billion, or $52 million daily. The company's stock price had also declined significantly during that time. Two weeks later, the company announced the sale of select hedge funds and securities in an effort to reduce their exposure to mortgage-related investments. Temasek Holdings agreed to purchase the funds and increase its investment in the company by $3.4 billion.