That same year, Charles Merrill and Edmund Lynch arrived in New York, where they met and became friends. The two 22-year-old entrepreneurs had both recently finished college and gravitated to Wall Street to seek their fortune. At that time, the stock market was chiefly the domain of a smal...
, American financial-services holding company whose principal subsidiary, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc., is the largest retail brokerage house in the United States. Headquarters are in New York City. In 1914 Charles E. Merrill, a bond dealer, founded a small investment-banking ...