| 作者 |
 回复三中心：Merrill Chief is stepping down (Sunday) |
 |
ceo/cfo
[博客]
[个人文集]
头衔: 海归中将
声望: 院士
性别: 
加入时间: 2004/11/05
文章: 12941
海归分: 491633
|
|
|
作者：ceo/cfo 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
D..., I missed a buying opportunity last Friday...
Next one will be Citi chief?? More likely will be Countrywide CEO.
Merrill Chief
Is Expected
To Step Down
Overture to Wachovia,
$8.4 Billion Credit Hit
Spur Directors to Move
By RANDALL SMITH and TOM LAURICELLA
October 27, 2007; Page A1
NEW YORK -- Merrill Lynch & Co. chief executive Stanley O'Neal is expected to step down from his post, according to someone familiar with the firm's plans.
The board is still working on the details of Mr. O'Neal's departure, including ironing out the details of his separation package and replacement scenarios, this person said. A Merrill spokeswoman declined to comment.
Those in the running for Mr. O'Neal's job include Laurence Fink, chief executive of money manager BlackRock Inc. and Gregory Fleming, Merrill's co-president. There could also be some power-sharing arrangement involving the two men, or a temporary solution to give the board more time to find a permanent replacement. Bob McCann, head of Merrill's huge brokerage arm, is also considered a candidate for a top job, according to Wall Street executives.
Mr. Fink's name has been mentioned repeatedly over the past week, but people familiar with the matter said the board hasn't had extensive discussions with him.
Directors have grown increasingly frustrated since Merrill announced $5 billion in write-downs three weeks ago. In the past week, the size of the hit grew by more than $3 billion, and Merrill reported a $2.24 billion net loss for the third quarter. Analysts say several billion dollars in additional write-downs may be in store.
The latest board meeting came after news that Mr. O'Neal had approached Wachovia Chief Executive G. Kennedy Thompson in the past week about whether the Charlotte, N.C., bank would be interested in a combination with Merrill. Mr. O'Neal didn't consult with the board before making the phone call. Mr. Thompson, who has said he is focused on integrating two recent acquisitions, said the timing wasn't right for a deal, people familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Fink and Mr. O'Neal had dinner together Thursday night, people familiar with the matter said, fueling speculation of a management change. A Merrill spokeswoman declined to comment.
The discussions between Merrill and Wachovia were reported in the New York Times.
At a company-wide meeting to discuss the write-downs, someone asked Mr. O'Neal if he had considered a merger, and he said no, according to people who heard his remarks.
MORE ON MERRILL
• Deal Journal: 200 Million Reason$ for O'Neal to Find Buyer
• Deal Journal: Why a Merrill-Wachovia Deal is Unlikely
• Merrill Takes $8.4 Billion Credit Hit
10/25/07
• MarketBeat: Live-Blogging the Merrill Conference Call
10/24/07
• CEO Transforms Merrill, at a Cost
10/08/07
• Subpar Scorecard: How housing slump is hitting profitsIf Merrill were sold and Mr. O'Neal departed, he could stand to make roughly $200 million in severance payments and accelerated payout of previous stock awards, according to the company's proxy. That's more than he would receive if he resigned or were forced out.
Merrill's stock price surged $5.19, or 8.5%, to $66.09 a share Friday on reports that Mr. O'Neal might be on his way out and on speculation the firm could be acquired.
Another person mentioned as a candidate for Merrill's top job is New York Stock Exchange chief John Thain. He has plentiful Wall Street experience as the former co-president of Goldman Sachs.
Most of Merrill's directors have arrived since Mr. O'Neal took over as CEO in 2002 and several have longtime ties to him. However, some directors have been griping about the losses and agitating for change. A handful of Merrill alumni have also been considering a movement to get Mr. O'Neal pushed out.
Some of the most pointed questions at the previous Merrill board meeting, at which Mr. O'Neal discussed the third-quarter write-downs, were asked by Armando M. Codina, the chief executive of Flagler Development Group in Jacksonville, Fla., according to a person familiar with the meeting. Mr. Codina, a director since 2005, chairs the board's nominating and corporate-governance committee.
Mr. O'Neal, 56 years old, is the first African-American to head a major Wall Street brokerage firm. The Alabama native earned a Harvard M.B.A. and was working in finance at General Motors Corp. when he was recruited to join Merrill's investment bank in 1986. By 1998, Mr. O'Neal was chief financial officer.
The Merrill Mr. O'Neal inherited earned $1.7 billion less than rival Morgan Stanley on almost exactly the same revenue. Those were the figures for 2000, the year before the Merrill board picked Mr. O'Neal as president and he effectively began running the show.
Most of his predecessors as CEO had been outgoing former stockbrokers who favored expansion as the way to profits. Mr. O'Neal refocused Merrill, cutting costs and focusing on high-profit areas. One of those areas was the business of bundling home loans into securities, the area that later played a big role in the write-downs.
At times Mr. O'Neal has been reluctant to share power. Until May, he held all three top jobs at the firm as chairman, chief executive and president. He is not afraid to fire those around him who he doesn't feel are up to snuff. In July 2003, six months after becoming CEO, he ousted two top executives, including his then-No. 2, Thomas Patrick, who had helped engineer Mr. O'Neal's ascent as CEO. That came after Mr. Patrick ob<x>jected to the firing of another executive, Arshad Zakaria, who was campaigning to become the firm's president. In the wake of the recent losses, senior executives in Merrill's bond department were shown the door.
Mr. O'Neal has had his share of successes, including the deal in 2006 that gave Merrill a 49% stake in BlackRock in exchange for Merrill's asset-management business.
But that deal is coming back to haunt Mr. O'Neal as BlackRock's Mr. Fink appears to be in the running to be the next Merrill CEO. The week before Merrill reported its $8.4 billion write-down, BlackRock beat analysts' earnings estimates and reported $40 billion in new inflows as investors turned to the firm to manage their cash following the summer's volatile markets. On Thursday, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. upgraded BlackRock stock to a buy from a neutral rating, noting "the visionary leadership" of Mr. Fink.
Hanging on the wall outside Mr. Fink's office at BlackRock is a framed menu bearing his signature and that of Mr. O'Neal. The menu is from the Three Guys Restaurant, a Manhattan diner where in January 2006 the pair met to discuss the deal between Merrill and BlackRock. Mr. Fink helped found BlackRock and built it into one of the world's largest money managers with $1.3 trillion in assets.
If the 54-year-old Mr. Fink lands the Merrill job, it would close another circle. In March 1988, Mr. Fink left First Boston Inc. after the mortgage-backed securities group he oversaw suffered huge losses. The experience helped shape Mr. Fink's strategy at BlackRock, which stresses risk controls in managing money. The firm has largely dodged the bloodletting that started this summer in the mortgage-backed securities market, as well as turbulence elsewhere in the stock and bond markets.
Mr. Fink is "very, very concerned about the risk-management side of the business and I think that's been a hallmark of BlackRock," says Morningstar analyst Rachel Barnard.
Over the past year, BlackRock's risk models began waving red flags about lending standards and the potential for rising defaults in the mortgage market, even as ratings agencies were still giving many mortgage-backed securities top scores for safety, says BlackRock President Robert Kapito. BlackRock began pulling back from riskier parts of the mortgage market. "It can be painful when the competition is showing higher yields," says Mr. Kapito.
Mr. Fink's risk-management abilities could help him at Merrill, but he doesn't have recent experience within a major brokerage firm. Merrill's core is its army of 16,000 brokers, who rank No. 1 in revenues per broker. Mr. Fink also lacks experience managing a trillion-dollar balance sheet, which proved perilous for Mr. O'Neal.
If Mr. Fleming were to take charge with Mr. Fink, it would help placate Merrill's investment bankers and possibly the brokers, who might resent an outsider taking over a firm that prides itself on its home-grown talent. Mr. Fleming began as an investment banker doing deals for financial companies. He advised Wachovia's Mr. Thompson on predecessor First Union Corp.'s $14.5 billion acquisition of Wachovia.
The head of Merrill's brokerage force, Mr. McCann, is also likely to figure in the new management mix because the business he leads has been successful and wasn't part of the write-down problem. Although Mr. McCann once led the firm's research and global stock-markets division, he doesn't have Mr. Fink's deep bond-market experience.
作者：ceo/cfo 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
|
|
|
| 返回顶端 |
|
 |
|
-
 回复三中心：Merrill Chief is stepping down (Sunday) -- ceo/cfo - (9172 Byte) 2007-10-28 周日, 23:00 (1092 reads)
|
|
|
|
您不能在本论坛发表新主题, 不能回复主题, 不能编辑自己的文章, 不能删除自己的文章, 不能发表投票, 您 不可以 发表活动帖子在本论坛, 不能添加附件不能下载文件, |
|
|
