what to you think of Merrill Lynch?

Answer 1

Mon Dec 24, 2:21 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US banking and brokerage titan Merrill Lynch said Monday that Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd., a Singapore state-owned investment group, will buy a hefty 4.4 billion dollar stake in the investment firm.

The government-controlled fund will also have the option to purchase an additional 600 million dollars of Merrill Lynch stock by March 28 under the deal's terms.

The US investment house, which is reeling from multibillion dollar losses in ailing mortgage investments, said Temasek's ownership stake would remain under 10 percent.

The deal is the latest in which a cash-rich foreign state-controlled fund has bought a big shareholding in a US bank.

Merrill Lynch, one of the best-known names in the financial services industry, is really two companies. One is a thriving wealth management company with $1.8 trillion of assets that is managed by the firm's army of 16,000 brokers plus a 49 percent interest in Black Rock, a fast growing asset management operation. Last year the earnings of this part of the company increased 70 percent over the year before.

The other part is a fixed-income or bond trading operation that had invested heavily in relatively high-risk, high-return securities backed by subprime home mortgages. These securities have lost value as housing prices have fallen and the number of foreclosures has grown. In late October, 2007, the company posted a write-down of $8.4 billion to recognize the decline in value of these securities. Shortly thereafter, E. Stanley O'Neal was removed as chief executive as a result of the losses and an unauthorized merger proposal. On Nov. 14th, John A. Thain, the chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange and a former president of Goldman Sachs, was named as Mr. O'Neal's successor.

Answer 2

its the biggest financial group in the world..or the biggest investment group in the universe... so no doubt about it,..