Merrill Lynch Reviews

Pros

Good Reputation, Pay is good, Best platforms in the business, great availability to products

Cons

Bank of America is bringing the company down

Advice to Senior Management

Stop pushing BOA products

Pros

Good benefits package and also a good severance package. Managers were not too demanding and overall the employees were typically pretty happy.

Cons

Not a well run company. If anything needed to get done there was the corporate run around. The pay scale was also low.

Advice to Senior Management

It's tough because Merrill Lynch is such a large company. No one knows whats going on and the employees seemed to know more then the managers.

Pros

Strong Brand Name recognition and good benefits.

Cons

Poor Management and lack of proper training.

Advice to Senior Management

invest in your employees if you want them to remain loyal.

Pros

Great company, lot to learn and open to new younger talent. Always a plus for interns and recent college grads.

Cons

Declining name after being acquired by Bank of America, and too many locations ... almost like you're competing with yourself.

Pros

If you're doing the advisor internship pick a strong team, there's several good ones in the Century City office. Make sure that you hustle and get to know everyone while you're there.

Cons

BOMAL is not the best Financial Advisory program out there.

Advice to Senior Management

Promote strong program managers within.

Pros

- Generally good overall benefits, though medical co-pays seemed to increase every year
- Broad IT landscape affords opportunities across a wide array of skills
- Prestigious, well-known brand
- Smart and motivated people

Cons

- Large size of the firm creates problems communicating effectively and consistently to all employees
- Industry demands aggressive work schedule that challenges work-life balance
- Frequent Senior Management changes resulted in re-organizations and strategic re-direction

Advice to Senior Management

Since the Bank of America takeover, the firm faces severe challenges. The combined firm should leverage BofA strength on the retail banking side and ML strength in the institutional and wealth management businesses.

Pros

The brand is well known to most investors which makes it easier to get your foot in the door with investors that have not had a bad past experience with Merrill.

Cons

The financial crisis damaged the reputation of the brand with some of the less savvy investors. It takes longer to get simple requests approved due to the size of the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't let bank of America turn the brokerage and advisory side of the business into a culture that follows bank rules and does not reward performance past stated goals.

Pros

Merrill Lynch is a old name that is known by many, and really opens a lot of doors. Employees are very friendly and very easy to work with.

Cons

Merrill Lynch is very elitist, and at times turns off a lot of clients and potential clients. Because of this it creates one to work with who has the most money and not who you want to work with personally.

Advice to Senior Management

Merrill Lynch has great management with nothing but the highest qualities. They expect a lot from you, but they truly understand about how to get the highest performance out of their employees.

Pros

Besides the prestige and free lunches, you get to connect with many interesting and talented people by attending various company sponsored events. The people there are generally nice.

Cons

Long hours and work on weekends (occasionally).

Pros

Work Life Balance, Truly corporate culture, moderate pay

Cons

politics, less than market pay

Advice to Senior Management

Transparency required