Merrill Lynch

Merrill Lynch Wealth Management

Type	Division
Industry	Financial services
Founded	1914
Headquarters	250 Vesey Street New York City United States
Area served	Worldwide
Services	Investment management
Revenue	US$13.8 billion (2012)
Number of employees	15,100 (Financial Advisors 2010)
Parent	Bank of America
Website	ML.com

Merrill Lynch Wealth Management is the wealth management division of Bank of America. The firm is headquartered in New York City, and occupies the entire 34 stories of 250 Vesey Street, part of the Brookfield Place complex, in Manhattan. Merrill Lynch employs over 15,000 financial advisors and manages $2.2 trillion in client assets.

The firm has its origins in Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. which, prior to 2009, was publicly owned and traded on the under the ticker symbol MER. Merrill Lynch & Co. agreed to be acquired by Bank of America on September 14, 2008, at the height of the 2008 Financial Crisis. The acquisition was completed in January 2009 and Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. was merged into Bank of America Corporation in October 2013, although certain Bank of America subsidiaries continue to carry the Merrill Lynch name, including the broker-dealer Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith.

The company was founded on January 6, 1914, when Charles E. Merrill opened his Charles E. Merrill & Co. for business at 7 Wall Street in New York City. A few months later, Merrill's friend, Edmund C. Lynch, joined him, and in 1915 the name was officially changed to Merrill, Lynch & Co. At that time, the firm's name included a comma between Merrill and Lynch. In 1916, Winthrop H. Smith joined the firm.

In its early history, Merrill, Lynch & Co. made several successful investments. In 1921, the company purchased Pathé Exchange, which later became RKO Pictures. In 1926, the firm made its most significant financial investment at the time, purchasing a controlling interest in Safeway, transforming the small grocery store into the country's third largest grocery store chain by the early 1930s.

In 1930, Charles Merrill led the firm through a major restructuring, spinning-off the company's retail brokerage business to E.A. Pierce & Co. to focus on investment banking. Along with the business, Merrill also transferred the bulk of its employees, including Edmund C. Lynch and Winthrop H. Smith. Charles Merrill received a minority interest in E.A. Pierce in the transaction. Throughout the 1930s, E.A. Pierce remained the largest brokerage in the U.S. The firm, led by Edward A. Pierce, Edmund Lynch and Winthrop Smith would also prove one of the most innovative in the industry, introducing IBM machines into the business' record keeping. Additionally, by 1938, E.A. Pierce would control the largest wire network with a private network of over 23,000 miles of telegraph wires. These wires were typically used for trade execution.