A modest proposal to the board of directors at Merrill Lynch from a former (and onced RIFed) employee.

I’m interested in the quarterly corporate earnings announcements by Fortune 500 firms. It’s not because I’m much of an investor. When I was living in the U.S. the only time I would view much in the way of financial news on CNBC was at the end of a dreary session of channel surfing with the remote. Fifty seven channels and there’s nothing on, as the Boss sings. I was always amazed at the interest and high ratings that Jim Cramer’s extremely grating “Mad Money” investment program on that network garners. I figure that there must be some real good investment advice and hot stock tips coming out of that show to make his irritating Louis Ruckyeser on steroids shtick (with a bit of Pee Wee Herman like dementia thrown into the mix) worth enduring. Rather my interest is because at some point or another in my working life I’ve been at most of the Wall Street biggies, either as a consultant or perm. So that’s why I’m always all ears and eyes for financial news about: BNP Paribas, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Swiss Bank, DeutcheBank and Merrill Lynch. Merrill was the last one I worked at for 6 years until I was part of a 15,000 staff downsizing in 2003. The euphemism that management used then was “reduction in force” or RIF for short. The corporate world is averse to using the word firings or layoffs much in the same way that the funeral industry prefers “loved one” or “passed away” rather than just “dead”. Reduction in force sounds like some sort of smart military manoeuvre instead of just showing some teary employees the front door. Merrill Lynch in the past would have been most reluctant to fire employees and the firm once had the nickname, “Mother Merrill”. Actually I heard that term for the first time when an associate I knew in Municipal Bonds was fired after 20 years with the firm in early 2001. He was in shock when he announced to us that he was being separated from Mother Merrill and his anguish was palpable in the email message. Two years later when it was my turn there wasn’t much shock left; I never heard Mother Merrill mentioned by anyone. By that time Stan O’Neal had succeeded Dave Komansky as CEO and Chairman of the Board. O’Neil let everyone inside and out of Merrill know his dislike for that term and the corporate maternalism that it represented. In all fairness Stan O’Neal’s corporate governing style, as it relates to his underlings, is not much different than that of the other big captains of today’s industry who believe that there is no unspoken covenant with productive long term employees that guarantees them life time employment. I’ll spare the readers of this post any rants or diatribes against the cruel avarice of Corporate America. I certainly won’t go to any length here and relate how in the wake of the 9/11/01 attacks Merrill’s IT staff worked in an around the clock exhaustive effort for a month to keep systems and applications critical to the firm’s day to day operations running and how this extra work was made necessary by the firm’s pennywise and pound foolish decision in years past not to fund a business continuity plan. This is also not the time and place for me to say that when the dust settled a few weeks later how some of those same staffers started getting RIFed, just in time for the holidays. And I will not talk now about my experiences after leaving ML in trying to get my career back on track. If Steven King ever becomes bored with writing tales of horror beyond the grave and turning to the more macabre subject of trying to find work in America at middle age he should consult me for the basic research. No, my objective in recollecting all of this is in my expressed interest in returning to ML. The big business new today is that after presiding over the biggest quarterly loss in Merrill’s history and with many Wall St. analysts predicating that ML’s 4th quarter will be even worse, Mr O’Neil has himself been RIFed by the board and shown the front door of 4 Financial Center. In departing he will receive at least $159 million in severance along with 30 million in retirement benefits. Now that the board is looking for a new CEO I would like to propose myself as a candidate. Yes, I was just a systems guy at Merrill with no trading background. My answer is that Stan wasn’t a trader either. It’s true he was CFO for a time at Merrill and has some very impressive academic credentials. My argument is that I can do the same job of losing 2.5 billions of dollars even without a MBA from Harvard Business School. And I can do so for a lot less than the 40 million or so that he earned per annum at the helm. I’d be willing to take the job for the coolie wages of let’s say, 1 million and when my term is up, after loosing just a few million or so, I will take my golden parachute at the dirt cheap rate of 15 million. Plus Merrill doesn’t have to spend a lot in the search effort. I’m tan (it’s almost summer here in New Zealand), rested and ready.