Business Plan 1. Merrill's vision Charles E.

Merrill founded the company that bears his name in 1914 and charged it with the proposition that the financial markets should be accessible to everyone. Merrill Lynch has delivered on that and is credited with bringing Wall Street to Main Street. Before the founding fathers started the firm in 1914, Edmund Lynch and Charles Merrill already had a vision for his future company, and understood the markets of scale. In an article in 1911 Charles Merrill wrote, Having thousands of customers scattered throughout the United states is infinitively preferable to being dependent upon the fluctuating buying power of a smaller and perhaps on the whole wealthier group of investors in any one section (Sobel, 2000, p. 298). 2. Market analysis As mentioned in 'spotting the opportunity' Merrill identified an untapped market with unlimited potential from Middle-Class America. 3. Service Like many new firms in the securities field, the partners offered brokerage services to retail customers, a function with only modest income potential, and they also pursued small and medium-sized underwriting deals in the $1 to $3 million range for corporate clients with no, or little, prior access to capital markets. Given the fact that companies in established sectors like railroads and steel dealt only with the elite investment banking houses that were capable of underwriting new issues totalling in the tens of millions of dollars, Merrill tried to identify alternative possibilities with growth potential. He settled on providing underwriting services for the neglected retail sector of the economy 4. Management team In January 1914, Merrill opened his own small office. After two or three months of promising results, he recruited his friend Lynch, and the partnership of Merrill, Lynch & Co. was formed. Thus began Merrill's first career on Wall Street (Perkins, 1999). The two principals were bright and ambitious a combination fit for success. While Merrill was the strategist; Lynch took care of the details 5. Marketing Although Merrill & Company did not engage in marketing and lacked an established advertising strategy, they did start out with experience in marketing securities themselves. While working at George H. Burr & Company, Merrill inherited a secretary by the name of Lillian Burton. Burton had previous brokerage experience. It was here that

she provided Merrill with invaluable knowledge on marketing securities to the general public. She had seen the sordid side of the sub-prime brokerage industry and knew what needed to be done in order to operate a respectable bond business. Her experience in marketing to the masses proved invaluable to Merrill. As was the case with many of Charles Merrills business acquaintances, she would remain an integra l part of his business life for decades. (Farlin, 2008) Later on encouraged by Rudolph Guenther, a partner in Albert Frank-Guenther Law, he embarked on a comprehensive and unheard of direct advertising campaign (Perkins 1999). The collaboration of Merrill and Guenther would last over four decades. In order to attain the middle-class American market, ML started a campaign using the slogan: Bringing Wall Street to Main Street. Merrill experimented with various forms of advertising circulars, newspaper advertisements and what is now known in the industry as a warm call follow-up.

References Farlin, J.D. 2008, 'Charles E. Merrill: The Father of Main Street Brokerage', Journal of the North American Management Society, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 3-11.

Perkins, E.J. 1999, ' New Strategies for Stockbrokers: Merrill Lynch & Co. in the 1940s', BUSINESS,4ND ECONOMIC HISTORY, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 173-183. Perkins, E. J. 1999, 'Wall Street to Main Street, Cambridge', UK: Cambridge University Press. Sobel, R. (2000). 'The Pursuit of Wealth: The Incredible Story of Money Throughout the ages' McGraw-Hill, pp 298.