He climbed the company greasy pole excessive sufficient to turn out to be the primary Black CEO of a number one Wall Road brokerage.

However he needed to go away Merrill Lynch six years later amid the chaos introduced on by the 2007 housing market crash. He had the dignity of being named the “Most Highly effective Black Govt in America” in 2002 by Fortune Journal. However he was later blamed for setting the stage for Merrill’s eventual sale to Financial institution of America, a deal that some say has left the agency within the shadow of its banking companion.

Such have been the ups and downs within the profession of Stanley O’Neal, the primary Black CEO of a big Wall Road brokerage. Whether or not his downfall was the results of his personal poor selections relatively than easy dangerous timing remains to be a matter of debate. He was definitely removed from the one Wall Road CEO to see his status tarnished by a market crash that only a few noticed coming.

What’s past dispute are the immense odds he needed to overcome to achieve the C-suite. O’Neal is the grandson of a former slave and was born in Roanoke, Alabama, in 1951, into impoverished circumstances. 

Regardless of these disadvantages, he was in a position to profit from newly opened alternatives and acquire a formidable training. When he was 12, his household moved to Atlanta and enrolled him in a just lately built-in college.

O’Neal went on to review industrial administration on the Basic Motors Institute (now Kettering College), working part-time on an meeting line at a GM plant. A scholarship from GM allowed him to attend Harvard Enterprise Faculty, the place he earned an MBA in finance in 1978.

O’Neal joined Merrill Lynch in 1986 as an funding banker in its high-yield finance group. He rose to carry numerous senior positions, changing into the pinnacle of the agency’s capital markets group, the co-head of its company and institutional shopper group and chief monetary officer.

In 2000, O’Neal turned the president of Merrill’s U.S. personal shopper group, which then oversaw the agency’s brokerage enterprise. He pushed by way of a restructuring whereas additionally introducing new applied sciences and merchandise.

O’Neal was promoted to president and chief working officer of Merrill Lynch in 2001. His appointment as CEO the next yr made him the primary individual to guide the agency who had not began his profession as a dealer. 

O’Neal proved a gradual hand by way of a number of market shocks, together with the aftermath of the 9/11 assaults, the Enron scandal and the dot-com bust. He is credited for diversifying the agency’s income sources and lengthening its worldwide presence. He is additionally generally blamed for pursuing dangerous investments in subprime mortgages and different advanced securities.

The outcomes had been promising at first. In 2006, Merrill Lynch posted the very best annual earnings up to now in in its historical past. The next yr, although, noticed the agency endure its largest quarterly loss ever amid the collapse of the subprime mortgage market.

Like many Wall Road companies, Merrill stood on the precipice of catastrophe. O’Neal tried to arrange a rescue by negotiating a merger with Wachovia. After that fell by way of, he resigned. It was left to his successor, John Thain, to dealer the sale to Financial institution of America in 2008.

O’Neal has largely stayed out of the limelight since leaving Merrill. Through the years, he has served on the boards of distinguished firms equivalent to Alcoa, Basic Motors and the light-weight metals producer Arconic. By all of the ups and downs, the improbability of his story was by no means misplaced on O’Neal.

In a 2003 interview with Newsweek, he stated, “Let’s face it: If I had been born 30 years earlier, there is no method that we would ever be sitting right here, having this dialog.”

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