Merrill Lynch Case Analysis

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“Corporate executives and business owners need to realize that there can be no compromise when it comes to ethics, and there are no easy shortcuts to success. Ethics need to be carefully sown into the fabric of their companies” (Vivek Wadhwa). Therefore, if Merrill Lynch had not forgotten their ethics the lawsuits would not have been so detrimental to their brand. Charles Merrill, who was a native of Florida, embarked on a journey that would lead him on his way to New York; he had the precognition to separate much of his holdings before the 1929 crash. Similar consideration would have served the firm well during the era of collateral securities in the early 2000s. So on January 6, 1914, Charles Merrill launched his brokerage firm as a one-man …show more content…

In 1926, they purchased a controlling interest in Safeway, which was their most paramount financial investment for the firm because it transformed a minuscule grocery store chain into the third most astronomically immense grocery store chain by the early 1930s (Edwin Perkins, 1999, p. 238). Furthermore Merrill, Lynch & Co. made prosperous investments in the companies’ early history. The company, founded themselves on five ethical concepts such as client focus, respect for the individual, teamwork, responsible citizenship, and integrity (Anne Szustek, 2014). Throughout the 1930s, Fenner & Beane was consistently the second most exceedingly immense securities firm in the U.S. the fused firm, which became the clear bellwether in securities brokerage in the U.S., was renamed Merrill Lynch, Perforate, Fenner & Beane (Wigmore, 1985, p.238). By March of 1958, the firm had become a Big Board member of the New York Stock …show more content…

Merrill Lynch was incidentally connected to the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme by sanctioning the infamous fraudster to trade utilizing feeder funds issued by Merrill Lynch (Touryalai, 2011, p.1). The Trustee seeking reprisal for Madoff’s victims went by the designation of Irving Picard; he claimed that Merrill Lynch was well cognizant of the possibility of fraud within Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. However, Merrill decided not to take notice of any of the transactions, even though another company had gainsaid prospects that had previously invested with Madoff. Merrill Lynch had to pay back $16 million after the lawsuit was

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