Courtesy of Pam Martens
Thomas K. Montag, Chief Operating Officer and President of Global Banking and Markets, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
This past Sunday’s New York print edition of the New York Times carried an in-depth article by Kate Kelly on the “toxic environment” at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, pointing the finger at Thomas Montag for creating it. Kelly is a good investigative reporter and deserves praise for outing this current conduct at the firm. But Montag, the President of Global Banking and Markets, has only been with Bank of America Merrill Lynch since August of 2008 – a period of less than 13 years. The toxic environment at Merrill Lynch dates back half a century.
Let’s start with the Helen O’Bannon case. In her book, Tales from the Boom-Boom Room, author Susan Antilla describes the personality test that Merrill Lynch gave to prospective brokers in the 1970s. O’Bannon, who had a Masters in Economics from Stanford, was asked to answer the following question on the test:
“Which quality in a woman do you consider most important? 1) beauty 2) intelligence 3) dependency 4) independence or 5) affectionateness?”
If the job applicant answered “intelligence” or “independence,” no points were given while an answer of “dependency” or “affectionateness” scored two points. One point was given for beauty. O’Bannon had answered “intelligence.” She was denied a broker training spot at Merrill Lynch. O’Bannon sued and received a settlement of $10,000 in 1976.
The kind of broker Merrill apparently had in mind was someone like Michael Stamenson, who played a hand in bankrupting Orange County, California in 1994 by selling it complex securities that imploded but made plenty of money for Merrill. Stamenson was immortalized in evidence produced in the Orange County court case as the star of a Merrill Lynch training tape for rookie brokers. On the tape, Stamenson outlined the attributes to be a successful broker: “the tenacity of a rattlesnake, the heart of a black widow spider and the hide of an alligator.”
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