Word: deal
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...weekend before Lehman Brothers' collapse, Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain turned to Lewis for help. Thain called Lewis to offer him 10% of his firm. Lewis said he wanted it all. By the end of the weekend, the deal was done. Lewis was hailed as a hero for saving Merrill on the same morning that Lehman was forced to file for bankruptcy. (See the top 10 bankruptcies...
Lewis had long coveted the retail brokerage business. Merrill Lynch, with its legions of investment salespeople, was to be Lewis' crowning acquisition. It ended up being his undoing. In the quickly hatched deal, Lewis paid $19 billion for Merrill, which most people agreed was nearly bankrupt. In the fourth quarter alone, Merrill Lynch lost more than $15 billion...
...Wednesday, he sent an e-mail to the bank's staffers saying he will retire by the end of the year. Lewis, 62, said it was his decision to leave, but no one could miss the huge legal dustup swirling around him over the bank's deal late last year to buy Merrill Lynch. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo have been investigating whether Lewis misled shareholders to gain approval of that acquisition. He could soon face charges in those probes. (See the top 10 crooked CEOs...
When McColl retired in 2001, Lewis took over. But rather than retrenching as most people expected, Lewis proved he liked the art of the deal as much as McColl. In 2003, Bank of America bought Boston-based bank Fleet for $47 billion. Two years later he spent $35 billion to buy credit card giant MBNA. And as the credit crisis began to unfold, Lewis picked up Countrywide, which at its height was the nation's largest independent mortgage lender, for just over $4 billion...
Many analysts believe that the Merrill deal, while risking the solvency of Bank of America, will end up being a boon for the bank. Merrill still has a strong investment-banking franchise, and even in the depth of the financial crisis, its wealth-management business continued to be profitable. Nonetheless, Lewis won't be around to see the fruits of the deal...