• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3463 0

By 1990, he had been put in charge of the junk bond desk, where he quickly impressed the top brass with both his effectiveness and his ruthlessness, something he would continue to do as he made his way up the ladder. As the head of the brokerage division when the Internet bubble burst, he laid off thousands of brokers—without asking his then boss, CEO David Komansky, for permission. As chief financial officer in the late 1990s, he sent Komansky an analysis of the company that was far tougher and more clear-eyed than the Merrill culture was accustomed to—criticizing the firm’s low profit margins and concluding that “the root causes of our uncompetitive margins are both structural and cultural.” Far from being put off by O’Neal, Komansky was impressed. “The one thing about Stan,” Komansky later told The New Yorker, “was that he gets things done.”

By July 2001, O’Neal had been named president of Merrill Lynch. Komansky had planned to stay on as CEO for a few more years, until he turned sixty-five, but two events forced him out earlier. The first was 9/11. Several Merrill employees died in the attack, and the firm’s headquarters were badly damaged. During and after the attacks, O’Neal took charge while Komansky seemed paralyzed. “O’Neal filled the vacuum,” recalls one former executive. Concluding that Wall Street was unlikely to recover quickly after 9/11, O’Neal instituted big layoffs. Komansky cautioned him against such a move, fearing a public backlash so soon after the terrorist attacks, but O’Neal had no patience for such thinking.

Secondly, though, O’Neal simply wasn’t willing to wait a few more years to become CEO. He was ready now. Before being named president, he’d had rivals for the top job. He outmaneuvered them, and then, as president, pushed them aside. Once he became president, he cultivated key allies in the firm who had ties to board members; they began agitating for O’Neal to take over, arguing that the firm couldn’t wait to make the changes O’Neal had in mind. By the end of 2002, Komansky had turned over the reins to O’Neal. Though he had hoped to stay on as board chairman, Komansky soon acceded to O’Neal’s demand that he give up that role as well.

Thanks to all the jockeying around O’Neal’s ascension, the Merrill Lynch executive suite had become a very political place. His appointment as CEO didn’t end the palace intrigue. Strangely, though, the next round of intrigue came not from his many enemies in the firm, but from two of his closest allies. One was Arshad Zakaria, the head of global markets and investment banking. The other, Tom Patrick, who had been Merrill’s chief financial officer under Komansky, was effectively O’Neal’s number two, though he lacked the title of president. O’Neal had told the board he didn’t feel any need to fill the position.

Within a matter of months, Patrick began going behind O’Neal’s back to the board, pushing board members to insist that O’Neal name a president and promoting Zakaria for the job. (The reason behind Patrick’s ploy has always been a mystery, even to people at Merrill.) Although Zakaria did not openly join Patrick’s effort, he knew about the lobbying, and was lurking in the shadows. At least one board member was ready to do Patrick’s bidding.

But then, in July 2003, somebody whispered in O’Neal’s ear and told him what was going on. O’Neal responded fiercely. He went to the board, laid out what Patrick and Zakaria were doing, and demanded that the board back him—which it did. He then had Patrick escorted from the building. By early August, Zakaria was gone as well.

Almost every executive associated with Merrill Lynch at the time would later point to these firings as a critical event in the O’Neal era—and not for the better. O’Neal had always been insular; he was the kind of man who liked to play golf by himself. Now he became isolated. He had been wary; now he became suspicious of everyone around him. Patrick and Zakaria were extremely competent executives; he replaced them with more pliable lieutenants. He trusted no one but himself.

Although O’Neal didn