LONDON, Jan. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. today issued the
following:
Merrill Lynch & Co. today said that trading in Europe's new currency, the
euro, began smoothly in all markets. Foreign Exchange traders report brisk
activity while other trading desks report a smooth, orderly start with more
moderate volumes.
Preparations over the weekend for the launch of the euro have been
successfully completed, the firm said, adding that the conversion process was
completed ahead of schedule at 2:30pm yesterday (Sunday 3 Jan).
Merrill Lynch has been preparing for the euro's launch over the last
18 months.
-- An EMU Global Project Team was headquartered in London and in New York
with over a hundred professionals assigned to it full-time. The team
was supported by another 550 people divided up into 47 working groups
in locations throughout the world. Some 700,000 man hours went into
the preparations.
-- We identified 5,000 high-level milestones for the conversion of
200 global systems to enable them to handle transactions in the new
environment.
-- Four dress rehearsals for conversion weekend were held in order to test
the major components of our conversion plans.
"Our euro conversion weekend is a success and we are fully ready to
transact business in the new single currency," said Michael Marks, Executive
Chairman for Merrill Lynch Europe, Middle East and Africa and Edward Goldberg,
Executive Vice President, Operations, Services and Technology, in a joint
statement. "We are grateful for the tremendous effort undertaken by our
colleagues this past year and a half and we believe that Merrill Lynch is
uniquely positioned to capitalize on business opportunities in the region."
In anticipation of the single currency, Merrill Lynch has already made
significant investment in Europe -- the firm now employs some
7,500 professionals in 19 different countries in the region. Last year
Mercury Asset Management, one of Europe's leading investment managers, became
part of the Merrill Lynch group. We have also developed practical tools to
assist clients in the new EMU environment, including portfolio rebalancing
software for euro-denominated securities -- called the Emulator -- and what we
believe are the first truly comprehensive set of performance measurements for
the European fixed income market -- the EMU Broad Market Index, the European
High Yield Market Index and the Sterling Broad Market Index.
For conversion weekend around 900 staff in New York, London and on the
Continent worked around the clock on the conversion process of hundreds of
thousands of accounts and positions from the respective legacy currency to
euro. The staff involved in the exercise were mainly technology, operations,
services, finance and treasury personnel, but traders also came in during the
weekend to reconcile the new euro-denominated accounts. We manned a 24-hour
help desk for client inquiries.
Notes to Editors
1. Merrill Lynch is one of the world's leading financial management and
advisory companies. For the past nine years, the firm has held the
number one position for global debt and equity underwriting.
2. Through Merrill Lynch Asset Management and Merrill Lynch Mercury Asset
Management, wholly owned subsidiaries, the company is one of the
world's largest managers of financial assets.
3. Client assets under management worldwide total approximately
$1.35 trillion.
4. With 750 analysts covering the performance of more than
3,900 companies worldwide, Merrill Lynch is also the top-rated
research firm in the world.
5. Euromoney named Merrill Lynch Best Global Investment Bank and Best
Emerging Markets Equity Research House in its 1998 Awards for
Excellence. International Financing Review named Merrill Lynch as its
Bank of the Year for 1997.
SOURCE Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.
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CONTACT:
Media Relations - London: Richard Silverman
or Neal Jenkins of Merrill Lynch, 44-171-892-8664
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