BlackRock says O'Neal steps down from its board

BOSTON (Reuters) - Money manager BlackRock Inc (BLK.N) said on Tuesday that the former chairman and chief executive of Merrill Lynch & Co Inc MER.N, Stan O'Neal, has resigned from BlackRock's board.

Earlier on Tuesday, Merrill ousted O'Neal just days after the firm reported the biggest quarterly loss in its history, making him the highest-ranking casualty in the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis.

Merrill owns a 49 percent stake in BlackRock, the biggest publicly traded U.S. asset manager.

(Reporting by Muralikumar Anantharaman, editing by Phil Berlowitz)