Morgan Stanley hires ex-Merrill COO Fleming
Greg Fleming, Executive Vice President of Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. and President of the Global Markets and Investment Banking Group talks during the Reuters Investment Banking Summit in New York in this November 13, 2006 file photo.
Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid
NEW YORK |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley said on Sunday it hired former Merrill Lynch President and Chief Operating Officer Gregory Fleming to run its investment management group.
Fleming -- one of the architects of Merrill Lynch & Co Inc's sale to Bank of America Corp -- will be president of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, which includes the firm's merchant banking business. He will also be responsible for Morgan Stanley's global research and will report to incoming Chief Executive James Gorman, the firm said.
Fleming left Bank of America after the deal closed in January and has been working as a senior research scholar at Yale University. He has been portrayed as a key proponent of the sale of Merrill Lynch at the height of last year's financial crisis despite initial reluctance from then-Merrill CEO John Thain.
In Andrew Ross Sorkin's book on the financial crisis, "Too Big to Fail," Fleming was also credited with getting Bank of America to agree to pay Merrill bankers 2008 bonuses up to the same level as in 2007. He also got the bank to agree to an airtight "material adverse change" agreement, meaning that even if Merrill's businesses continued to deteriorate Bank of America couldn't easily back out of the deal.
Both elements of the deal proved to be very controversial as public outrage was sparked by news about the bonuses and as figures in subsequent months showed that Merrill's businesses were in worse shape than had been publicly acknowledged and Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis threatened to back out of the deal.
Fleming joined Merrill Lynch in 1992 and from 2003 to 2007 co-headed Merrill Lynch's markets and banking group. Fleming, a noted rainmaker who focused on financial companies, oversaw Merrill's investment banking.
He will be joining Morgan Stanley in February. Fleming's hiring follows a shuffle of executives announced earlier this week when Gorman pegged Morgan Stanley's chief financial officer and head of investment banking to run its crucial institutional securities unit.
(Reporting by Michael Erman, additional reporting by Martin Howell, editing by Martin Golan)
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In two years the “old” financial order has bankrupt, bought, or gained control of much of their banking competition, which they label by their media as “the shadow banking system”.
It should be no surprise that the largest monopoly banks left in power are Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.
All, except Bank of America, are part of the “old” financial order and mushroomed into power about 150 years ago during and after Lincoln’s Tax War, which Lincoln said he started solely to collect his new 40% import tax from Southerners under the Morrill Tariff Act of 1861. http://www.nationalcenter.org/LincolnFirstInaugural.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Tariff
With the passage of his National Bank Act of 1863, Abraham Lincoln, a puppet of Northern banks and industries, re-established Alexander Hamilton’s Centralist banking system in the United States, which set the foundation for the present day Federal Reserve System.
Under his First Legal Tender Act of 1862, Lincoln printed worthless paper money displaying images of Alexander Hamilton and Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase (as in Chase Bank), which ultimately destroyed State banking.
Today, using their own created banking club, i.e. the Federal Reserve, these same monopoly banks, have so far crushed the likes of Lehman Brothers, Country Wide Financial, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, CIT and have even gained control of Bank of America, whose leadership was not part of the “old” financial order that governs the United States.
This “old” financial order is founded on the principles of Alexander Hamilton, designer of the first U.S. Central Bank, who advocated that the public should be governed by an intellectual aristocracy maintained by the enlightened self-interest of the wealthy, rather than a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Hamilton maintained, “That power that holds the purse-strings absolutely must rule.”
Today, most of the economic advisors to President Obama are Hamiltonians, such as, Robert Rubin, Paul Volker and Lawrence Summers, all previously employed by the “old” financial order and also members of the Hamilton Project think tank.
As these monopoly banks increase their control by eliminating competition, consumers and small businesses will have even more difficulty borrowing money at reasonable rates, because of less competition in lending. Witness their recent destruction of CIT, the largest lender to small businesses.
Consumers and small businesses will have to lick the boots of the few elitist banks of the “old” financial order to obtain a loan.
Right now these monopoly banks are borrowing from the Federal Reserve at 1% and lending to consumers, via credit cards, at up to 30%. Price gouging is always the result of establishing monopolies.
Reminds one of J.P. Morgan’s government contract with Abraham Lincoln, where Morgan bought Federal rifles from the U.S. government for $3.50 and then sold them back to the U.S. Army for $22. J.P. Morgan’s rifles were notorious for blowing off the thumbs of the soldiers.
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