100 Entrepreneurs Who Changed The World
21. Charles Merrill 1885-1956
“If planters carry politics into the fields, they will find it bad business.”
Charles Edward Merrill was an American stockbroker, investor, and philanthropist. Merrell and his friend, Edmund C. Lynch, started Merrill Lynch in 1915, making money from retail brokerage. Merrill anticipated the great stock market crash on 1929 and divested many of his holdings prior to the Great Depression. It is rumored that Merrill had pleaded with President Calvin Coolidge (both men were alumni from Amherst) to speak out against speculation, but that Coolidge did nothing. In 1939, Merrill merged his retail brokerage with E.A. Pierce and Co., focusing the new Merrill Lynch and Co. on investment banking. Merrill was a major investor in Safeway foods and the S.S. Kresge Corporation, which would ultimately become K-Mart.
