Kind of Sad, Really

Some readers will remember that Merrill Lynch used to be Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith.

When I was a freshman in college the guy across the hall was the grandson of Smith. A nice fellow, but something of a ne'er-do-well, and he flunked out after the first semester. He had borrowed my Bob Dylan Blonde on Blonde album -- a double album! -- and I never saw it again.

It's sad to think of them as gone, nevertheless.



I think every Econ 101 class should be required to watch these confident, optimistic ads.

You remember EFHutton, right?



Whatever happened to EFHutton? This (from Wikipedia):

In early 1987, an internal probe revealed that brokers at an office in Providence, Rhode Island, laundered money for the Patriarca crime family. Although Hutton reported the investigation to the SEC, it wasn't enough to stop prosecutors from all but announcing that Hutton would be indicted.[5]

In a case of especially bad timing, this came only a week before the 1987 stock market crash. By the end of November, Hutton had lost $76 million, largely due to massive trading losses and margin calls that its customers couldn't meet. It also had its commercial paper rating cut from A-2 to A-3, effectively losing $1.3 million in financing. Hutton was now weeks—perhaps days, according to some board members—from collapse. [6] On December 3, Hutton agreed to a merger with Shearson Lehman Brothers. The merger took effect in 1988, and the merged firm was named Shearson Lehman Hutton, Inc.

It later emerged that Hutton had faced massive cash shorts as early as 1985, and the firm's management had tried to put it up for sale as early as 1986.[6]

In 1993, American Express sold its brokerage and asset management business—the Shearson and Hutton parts of Shearson Lehman Hutton—to Primerica. Primerica merged them with Smith Barney (which it had bought in 1987) to form Smith Barney Shearson, later shortened back to simply Smith Barney. As a result of several mergers over the rest of the decade, the remains of E.F. Hutton are now part of Citigroup.

And who can mention Smith Barney without remembering John Houseman?



Sigh.