Merrill Lynch history

In 1921, the company purchased Pathé Exchange, which later became RKO Pictures.

After a 1926 merger with Gwathmey & Company, the firm was renamed E. A. Pierce & Company the following year.

Huge returns led to more deals as Merrill found a string of upstart companies to finance, stopping only in 1928 when he became bearish about the markets and turned to building a grocery chain, Safeway.

When the crash came in 1929, Merrill, Lynch had already streamlined its operations and invested in low-risk concerns.

In 1930, Charles E. Merrill led the firm through a major restructuring, spinning-off the company's retail brokerage business to E. A. Pierce & Co. (formerly A. H. Housman & Co.) to focus on investment banking.

Additionally, by 1938, E.A. Pierce would control the largest wire network with a private network of over 23,000 miles of telegraph wires.

Like most brokers, Pierce struggled through the depression years, and in 1939 he persuaded Charles Merrill to rejoin him in the retail business.

On April 1, 1940, Merrill Lynch, merged with Edward A. Pierce's E. A. Pierce & Co. and Cassatt & Co., a Philadelphia-based brokerage firm in which both Merrill Lynch and E.A. Pierce held an interest. and was briefly known as Merrill Lynch, E. A. Pierce, and Cassatt.

In 1949 an advertisement in San Francisco for "women who'd like to know more about Investments" prompted 30,000 to enroll on an eight-week course.

In 1952, the company formed Merrill Lynch & Co. as a holding company and officially incorporated after nearly half a century as a partnership.

Charles Merrill's reputation soared to such heights that shortly before his death in 1956 one Wall Street historian referred to him as "the first authentically great man produced by the financial markets in 50 years."

Merrill set up tents at agricultural fairs and converted buses into travelling "stockmobiles". A programme that enabled people to invest as little as $40 a month reached its peak in 1958 when the 100,000th investment account was opened by a secretary in the American embassy in Moscow.

The merger came together due to the death of Christopher J. Devine in May 1963.

The company paid special attention to establishing a European presence, which allowed participation in the developing Eurobond market, and by 1964 had succeeded in becoming the first United States securities firm in Japan.

The company underwrote the sale of Howard Hughes's TWA stock in 1965, and in the next ten years added significant new business with firms such as Commonwealth Edison, Fruehauf, and Arco.

Net income in 1967 was a handsome $55 million, representing an increase of 300 percent during the previous eight years.

The exchange asked ML to step in and help Goodbody, and ML ended up acquiring the firm at the end of 1970.

In 1971 Merrill Lynch became the second member of the New York Stock Exchange to invite public ownership of its shares, and in July of that year became the first to have its own shares traded there.

The holding company was created in 1973.

London-based Brown-Shipley Ltd. soon became Merrill Lynch International Bank, and in 1974 ML acquired the Family Life Insurance Company of Seattle, Washington.

In 1977, the company introduced its Cash Management Account (CMA), which enabled customers to sweep all their cash into a money market mutual fund, and included check-writing capabilities and a credit card.

In 1978, it significantly buttressed its securities underwriting business by acquiring White Weld & Co., a small but prestigious old-line investment bank.

Roger Birk became the company's new chairman and CEO, followed in 1984 by William A. Schreyer.

In 1985 ML met a longstanding goal when it became one of the first six foreign companies to join the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Later in 1986 ML sold its real estate brokerage unit as part of Schreyer's plan to unload low-profit concerns so that the company could focus more on using its powerful retail divisions to sell the securities its investment-banking department brought in.

Then in April 1987, the company was caught speculating in hugely unsuccessful fashion when it lost $377 million trading mortgage-backed securities--the largest one-day, one-company trading loss in Wall Street history.

During 1988 ML also achieved a long-held goal when it edged out Salomon Brothers to become the largest underwriter in America.

By 1989, fully half of ML's $304 billion in customer accounts were placed in CMAs, and most of the other leading brokerage houses had developed similar integrated-investment vehicles.

The brokerage also had partners in Canada interested in the retail investment business for a number of years, until selling this subsidiary to CIBC Wood Gundy in 1990.

In the midst of this success, Schreyer retired in 1993 and was replaced as chairman and CEO by Daniel P. Tully, who had been president and COO.

Citron lost $1.69 billion, which forced the county to file for bankruptcy in December 1994.

Under Merrill Lynch International, it has several international operations, including Smith New Court PLC, a British securities firm acquired in 1995.

With its purchase of Midland Walwyn Inc in June 1998, Merrill Lynch re-entered the Canadian investment business.

But in December 2001, Merrill Lynch sold Midland Walwyn to CIBC Wood Gundy.

In 2003, Merrill Lynch became the second-largest shareholder for the Japanese animation studio TMS Entertainment.

In his first days at work in December 2007, Thain made changes in Merrill Lynch's top management, announcing that he would bring in former New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) colleagues such as Nelson Chai as CFO and Margaret D. Tutwiler as head of communications.

In July 2008, Thain announced $4.9 billion fourth quarter losses for the company from defaults and bad investments in the ongoing mortgage crisis.

In April 2009, bond insurance company MBIA sued Merrill Lynch for fraud and five other violations.