Merrill Lynch & Co Inc said on Tuesday Chairman and Chief Executive Stan O'Neal retired with immediate effect and named board member Alberto Cribiore to serve as non-executive chairman.
Cribiore, who has been a member of the Merrill Lynch board since 2003,will chair a search committee to find O'Neal's permanent replacement.
O'Neal's tenure comes to an end after he misjudged the company's exposure to risky subprime loans, triggering the largest quarterly loss in its 93-year history.
The company described his departure as a retirement.
Forecasting loss
O'Neal, the first African-American to run a major Wall Street company, became CEO of the world's largest brokerage in 2002, but he lost the confidence of Merrill's board after the company wrote down $8.4 billion in assets.
That resulted in a $2.3 billion third-quarter loss, or several times larger than what O'Neal warned of earlier this month.
The company said O'Neal and the board of directors both agreed that a change in leadership would best enable Merrill Lynch to move forward and focus on maintaining the strong operating performance of its businesses.
October 30 2007