Charles E. Merrill

Charles Edward Merrill (* October 19, 1885 in Green Cove Springs, Florida; † October 6, 1956 in Southampton, New York) was an American stockbroker and an investment banker -founder of Merrill Lynch & Co..

Life

He was the son of the physician and pharmacy owner Dr. Charles Merrill and Octavia Merrill, born Wilson. He spent his early childhood in his birthplace, in 1898 before the family first moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, and in the same year to Jacksonville in Florida. After the school, which he attended, was burned in the great fire of 1901, he was sent to a run by the John B. Stetson University High School, where he remained until 1903 and then moved for his senior year at the Worcester Academy. After two years of education at Amherst College, he attended the University of Michigan Law School in 1906 until 1907. Subsequently, he worked from 1907 to 1909 at Patchogue - Plymouth Mills and from 1909 to 1913 with George H. Burr & Co. in New York City. On 6 January 1914, he founded his own bank, Charles E. Merrill & Co. Six months later joined his friend Edmund C. Lynch, so the name of the bank in 1915 to Merrill Lynch & Co. (initially with a comma ) was changed.

As one of the first Wall Street banker, he predicted the Black Monday of 1929, the most momentous market crash in history.