Content area
Full Text
Note: Merrill Lynch's former CEO had close ties with Penn State. Now hundreds of the Thundering Herd's bankers and brokers struggle to cope with the sex abuse scandal.
NEW YORK - The Penn State sex abuse scandal has prompted soul searching by many of its alumni on Wall Street -- but perhaps nowhere greater than at Merrill Lynch, where hundreds of Nittany Lions roam among the Thundering Herd.
The shock waves from one of the nation's largest universities reached Wall Street when the school revealed a former football coach was accused of sexually abusing eight boys over a 15-year period.
The revelation led to the dismissal of Joe Paterno, the Nittany Lions' head football coach since 1966, and of the school's president. It also shocked the school's sprawling army of 557,000 alumni -- a bigger population than Tucson, Arizona.
Penn State's shadow looms especially large at brokerage Merrill Lynch, where thousands of graduates followed the lead of William Schreyer, a 1948 graduate who rose through Merrill's ranks and served as its chief executive from 1985 to 1993.
"I'm still struggling with it," said one Northeast U.S. Merrill adviser, one of several brokers who said they were not authorized by the firm to speak on the matter. Another broker said he has had to field questions about the...