Merrill Lynch’s famous bull logo has taken on a new aspect now that nearly everyone on Wall Street knows the story about the “unfortunate accident” that led to an employees shit being spread all over the place. And we’re not talking about a CDO squared portfolio.
The incident took place on the nineteenth floor of Merrill’s headquarters in the World Financial Center, according to our sources. The floor houses the fixed income group. Bonuses for the group are said to have dropped substantially from last year, although the decline was not as bad as some expected. The more senior guys are said to be very upset at their compensation but associates are pleasantly surprised after having their expectations lowered so dramatically.
But there may be more to this story than just a bonus rage. The story has been widely discussed within Merrill itself, and the predominant belief there is that it wasn’t a dissatisfied fixed-income researcher who engaged in the fecal protest. Inside the bull pen, the word is that it was an equities guy who came over to the fixed-income department and “inappropriately relieved” himself. He was supposedly seeking revenge against fixed-income for credit-market losses that have affected bonuses across the firm.
The plot thickens.
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Merrill Lynch
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- Use the Bloomberg command
NH BLG_DEALBREAKER <GO>
to access Dealbreaker
Ok everyone lets get back to more important news http://longorshortcapital.com/market-clearing-attractiveness.htm
Now that’s what I call a shitty bonus. [laugh track]
Gasparino and Ratigan are having a field day with the Merrill Turd Story.
If it was equity research why would he need to take a dump in the bathroom? He could have just stood in the center of the floor and opened his mouth.
Sad story made worse by reporting it. That being said, it is truly sad that hard working employees who crushed it this year are penalized. The short and long term financial goals remaining employees on both sides were destroyed by those no longer there.
Perhaps the more appropriate bathroom to remodel would have been the 8th floor, where the singular tiny urinal that still stands a foot off the floor, should be removed and shipped off to the hedge fund offices of the little man mainly responsible for all of this.
I bet it was Tom Hudson, it had to be Tom Hudson….
k, brilliant post
So what’s new? Everyone knows Merrill stinks.
Merrill does not stink. The way the place was managed is what stinked! Due to so many faults, a ML employee must work at least 3x as hard as a LEH, MS, or GS employee to produce the same dollar of revenue. Hopefully Mr. Thain will change this.
Let’s focus on the real story here, not some lunatic who slapped his shit on a wall. Sadly in a year when so many employees of both fixed income and equity sales and trading absolutely crushed it, they got paid flat or severely down as their firm and their sweat equity were gutted.
Simultaneous to next week’s earnings announcement, Merrill needs to purge all of Kim’s remaining “yes men” and send them to the newest hedge fund on the street in need of that urinal in the 8th floor mens room. Anyone venture to guess if that fund is holding any MBO’s or CDO’s?
So bizarre that on a day the market drops another 200+ points, Bank of America buys Countrywide, and it’s leaked that Merrill plans to write down another $15 billion, the most commented on story is about a man with shit on his shoe.
Wells Fargo may have shit on it’s shoe if it buys WaMu on Mon when market is down another 100…
About a decade ago, a natural gas marketer in Dallas had a serial pooper doing the same thing in an executive washroom. The staff named him “The Mad Shitter” and before long the company employees began to point the finger at each other for the misdeed. Management, in the meantime, had installed cameras into the washroom and the culprit was determined to be the guy who made regular overnight package deliveries to the company.
Guys at my high school shit all over the place all the time. It was no big deal.
Good story. The sheer fucking incompetence demonstrated by the top-line banks has been totally shit.
wfc is not buying wamu, please look at a map.
There was this guy named Finneran, maybe 10 or 15 years ago? Who took a dump on an airplane cart when he was refused service on a flight to S. America. He was a money manager, I believe. Anyone remember that, or just me….?
@8:22 Ya know bud, its a team effort. If in fact a few people in FI and Equity Sales “crushed it”, it was with the help of the firms balance sheet (which btw is bloated with inventory). So if the firm is sucking wind, the least you stars can do is accept a bonus the same as last year. And if you dont like it and are in fact so valuable, you can walk and will be scooped up quickly somewhere else. If yr not walking its probably cause you are in fact not all that valuable. (Cause if you were, would you be at ML in the first place??)
the same thing happened at the Accenture building in chicago (on N. LaSalle) except it was a serial booger wiper. not sure how that ended…
http://archive.salon.com/travel/diary/hest/1999/04/13/passenger/print.html
Get over this story/rumour lads – sh*t like this happens all the time in trading rooms. Pardon the pun but its sadly true.