Word: thomson
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Thomson soon moved into the "backstage" offices. He clerked by day, by night took accounting courses at New York University. In 1930, after E. A. Pierce & Co. took over Merrill Lynch's business, Thomson moved west to work in Cleveland and Detroit; in the depth of the Depression, he and other employees were sometimes paid in scrip (which was good for food) instead of cash. After the 1940 reorganization, Thomson moved back to New York, where he worked under, and eventually succeeded, his longtime friend Mike McCarthy as head of operations, the paperwork part of the business...
Success & Savings. Under Thomson, Merrill Lynch's backstage today is the most highly automated and most economical operation on Wall Street. As a junior executive in the 1940s, he began fretting about all the time that it took to move paper back and forth between front office and back. He thereupon introduced a conveyor-belt system that cut paper shuffling (and costs). In 1956, the firm moved boldly into computers. Strange as it may seem, Wall Street, which certainly has pressing need of computers, was slow to get into the electronic act; the New York Stock Exchange itself is still...
Hard but Clear. In the highly competitive brokerage business, Merrill Lynch naturally plays hard. Most of its rivals agree that it plays clean. Attempting to set up a computerized operation for members of the Midwest Stock Exchange in Chicago, Midwest President James Day recently called upon Thomson for advice. "I think that computers are good for the industry as a whole," said Thomson. "We'll be glad to help you out." Says Day today, after receiving the benefits of Merrill Lynch advice: "We are entering an era in which the computers are going to do everything except make love...
While he is computerized at work, Thomson leads a quietly unprogrammed life outside his office. He and Wife Dorothy, whom he married in 1927 after a courtship that began when a mutual friend introduced them on a commuter train, live in a shyly elegant ranch house in Westfield, N.J., an hour's trip by train and ferryboat from Wall Street. Thomson, in Merrill Lynch fashion, is an eager train-and evening-out bridge player; though he has a bent-armed swing, he plays golf in the low 80s, has certificates to prove that he has thrice scored holes...
...Year. To Thomson, investing in the market is no gamble, and he has statistics to prove his point. Under Merrill Lynch encouragement?to the tune of $400,000?the University of Chicago's Center for Research in Security Prices recently studied all stock-price changes since 1926, carried out 56,558,000 computerized transactions. Result: a long-term profit that varied according to tax bracket: a tax-exempt institution would have earned 9% per year on its investment since 1926; an individual in the $10,000-a-year bracket, 8.2%; and one in the $50,000-a-year bracket...