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Merrills Board Turns On Oneal

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by Felix Salmon
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Oct 26 2007 12:00am EDT

Merrill's Board Turns on O'Neal

Who told the NYT's Jenny Anderson about Stan O'Neal's abortive attempt to float a merger with Wachovia? She sources her scoop to "people close to the beleaguered Wall Street firm," which is not very helpful, but it seems clear that she and her colleague Landon Thomas spoke to one or more Merrill directors.

Why would any Merrill Lynch director leak this story to the NYT? Especially after all the shenanigans at Hewlett-Packard, one would think that a director would think twice about taking such a step. But maybe the board is so packed with O'Neal cronies that going public like this is the only way for a director unhappy with the CEO to oust him.

That said, I'm not convinced that an informal approach to Wachovia is much of a hanging offense, especially not compared to little things like, oh, losing $8 billion on toxic structured products. If the latter isn't going to result in O'Neal's ouster, I'm not sure that the former will.

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