Merrill Lynch & Co., formally Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, was a publicly-traded American investment bank that existed independently from 1914 until January 2009 before being acquired by Bank of America and rolled into BofA Securities.
The firm engaged in prime brokerage and broker-dealer activities and was headquartered in New York City, occupying the entire 34 stories of 250 Vesey Street. The company agreed to be acquired by Bank of America on September 14, 2008, at the height of the Financial crisis of 2007–2008, the same weekend that Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail. The acquisition was completed in January 2009 and Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. was merged into Bank of America Corporation in October 2013.
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 Exchange, 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, Merrill led the firm through a major restructuring, spinning-off the company's retail brokerage business to E. A. Pierce & Co. (formerly A. H. Housman & Co.) to focus on investment banking. Along with the business, Merrill also transferred the bulk of its employees, including 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 US. The firm, led by Edward A. Pierce, Lynch, and Smith would also prove one of the most innovative in the industry, introducing IBM machines into the business' record keeping. Additionally, by 1938, E.A. Pierce would control 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 Lynch in 1938, Smith began discussions with 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 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 US. The combined firm, which became the clear leader in securities brokerage in the US, 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.