Merrill Runs With the Bull

After the worst quarter in its history, Merrill Lynch is now scrambling to reassure investors who have been playing hot potato with its stock.

And what has Merrill come up with? Bull.

Merrill has taken out full-page ads, with its trademark bull logo, in the New York Times and Financial Times, as well as ads on numerous financial websites to explain "Why Merrill Lynch is Bullish on Merrill Lynch."

And why is Merrill Lynch bullish on Merrill Lynch? According to the advertisement, reasons include its $2 billion in net earnings for the first nine months of 2007, and record revenues for some divisions in the same period.

Of course, the ad does not mention the 40 percent decline in its stock price this year, its search for a new chief executive, or the expectations that the recent $8.4 billion charge won't be the last of Merrill's write-downs before the subprime mess is cleaned up.

Was this very high-profile address to investors the best way Merrill could have spent hundreds of thousands of ad dollars?

The Merrill bull is the kind of thing that marketing executives adore, but it has been known to elicit eye-rolling and snide comments from competitors up and down Wall Street. While J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs have stuck with understated, almost intentionally stodgy, geometric logos, Merrill's bull can look commercial, trendy, and a little too -dare we say it?-Main Street.

Even investors and employees who have no such beef with the bull may find the ad's message discouragingly platitudinous ("We try to remember that investing in not a sprint, but a marathon, that over the long term patience is invariably rewarded..."). It's short on concrete, specific information about how Merrill plans to weather this storm - the stuff that is needed to restore the confidence of investors and employees given a crisis of this magnitude.

Liz Gunnison