Stanley O'Neal

Early life and education E. Stanley "Stan" O'Neal was born in a Roanoke, Alabama hospital and raised in Wedowee, Alabama. As a child, he played with his sister, two brothers, and other family members on his grandfather's farm, "picking cotton and corn". He also sold and delivered newspapers. His father worked on the assembly line at the General Motors (GM) factory in Doraville, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. O'Neal attended West Fulton High School.

For college, he enrolled in the General Motors Institute (GMI) (today known as Kettering University), and participated in a work-study program that allowed him to rotate between working at the GM Doraville plant and taking engineering and industrial administration classes at GMI. He was elected vice president of the Afro-American Student Union. In 1978, he graduated with honors

Career O'Neal began his career at General Motors. During his tenure at GM, he received several promotions. In 1981, he was appointed director of GM's office in Madrid, Spain and supervised a team of 30 employees.

In 1997, he was named executive vice president and co-head of Global Markets and Investment Banking. In 2001, O'Neal became president of Merrill Lynch at CEO David Komansky's request. O'Neal was the first African-American CEO of a Wall Street firm. In April 2003 O'Neal was made chairman of Merrill Lynch as well, when Komansky resigned from the firm entirely. By August 2003, O'Neal dismissed Thomas H. Patrick, Sr., and Arshad R. Zakaria, two senior executives who had played pivotal roles in his promotion to CEO.

O'Neal wanted to transform Merrill into a trading powerhouse, and to surpass Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms. In 2006, he hired Osman Semerci as Global Head of Fixed Income, on the advice of trading and investment banking head Dow Kim and COO Ahmass Fakahany. Semerci continued Merrill's advances into the subprime mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligation (CDO) market, grew the firm's position from $5 to $6 billion worth of exposure to $55 billion in under one year, and fired trader Jeff Kronthal, who warned against too much exposure to CDOs. Merrill was one of the top CDO underwriters, and its executives received huge bonuses based on CDO performance. According to the then-president of Merrill, Greg Fleming, the dismissal of Kronthal in July 2006 was the day the firm's fate was sealed; in Fleming's opinion after Kronthal's firing Merrill was doomed to make the same mistakes as its competitors. As the crisis worsened, O'Neal made an unauthorized approach to Bank of America and Wachovia Bank about a possible merger, which played a role in his ouster. On October 30, 2007, O'Neal resigned as CEO. He left with a severance package including Merrill stock and options worth $161.5 million on top of the $91.4 million in total compensation he earned in 2006.

Later career and directorships CNBC included O'Neal in their list of "Worst American CEOs of All Time" in 2009. During the final hearings prior to the firm's merger with Bank of America, numerous people – including a founder's son, Win Smith – laid the blame on O'Neal for the firm's downfall and loss of independence.

In 2011, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) recommended that O'Neal be prosecuted for multiple crimes in connection with his activities as CEO of Merrill Lynch during the lead up to the sub-prime crisis. None of the FCIC's recommendations resulted in any individual prosecutions.

O'Neal is an avid golfer. 2000: Corporate Executive of the Year, Black Enterprise 2007: Keynote address, Wharton Economic Summit, Michael L. Tarnopol Dean's Lecture Series, Wharton School

Other board memberships advisory board, American Cancer Society, advisory board, Bronx Preparatory Charter School trustee, Buckley School, New York trustee, Catalyst trustee, Center for Strategic and International Studies member, Harvard Business School Visiting Committee director, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation director, NASDAQ Stock Exchange director, National Urban League director, Ronald McDonald House director, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard