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===Merrill Lynch===
In 1986, heO'Neal joined Merrill Lynch and, by the early 1990s, he was running Merrill's leveraged finance division.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=dF4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA84 Junk Bonds Bounce Back]. Black Enterprise, October 1992</ref> After spells as global head of capital markets and co-head of the corporate and institutional client group, he spent two years as [[CFO]] from 1998 to 2000. In 2000, he was appointed president of the U.S. Private Client Group, the first executive of the division that oversees Merrill's brokerage who had not himself been a broker. O'Neal led massive layoffs within the division.
O'Neal became president of the firm in 2001 in a palace intrigue that eventually led to the early ouster of his predecessor and one-time mentor [[David Komansky]].<ref>"[http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/money/komansky-merrill-ceo-article-1.505855 KOMANSKY OUT AS MERRILL CEO]", By Eric Herman / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS /July 23, 2002</ref> By 2003, he was CEO and chairman.<ref name="Euromoney" /> HeO'Neal was one of the first African Americans to hold such a high position on Wall Street. O'NealHe earned $48 million in 2006 and $46 million in 2007.<ref>[http://www.spiegel.de/spiegelspecialgeschichte/0,1518,585202,00.html Christiane Oppermann: Amerikaals Supermacht - Die Zocker von der Wall Street, Spiegel special Geschichte 4/2008]</ref> One of his first moves as CEO was to dismiss his number two executive, executive vice chairman Thomas H. Patrick, Sr., and afterward Arshad R. Zakaria, who headed institutional banking and securities. Originally there had been a deal where Patrick and Arshad R. Zakaria would support O'Neal's promotion to CEO, and in return Zakaria would be appointed president,. however onceOnce O'Neal became CEO, however, he refused to continue this "backroom dealing".<ref>"[https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/business/whatever-happened-to-mother-merrill.html whatever happened to mother merrill]", By LANDON THOMAS Jr, nytimes.com, August 03, 2003</ref><ref name="vanityfair.com">"[http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/11/financial-crisis-excerpt-201011 The Blundering Herd]", Vanity Fair, November 2010</ref>
As CEO, heO'Neal attempted to get rid of the 'Mother Merrill' culture of job security, arguing that it promoted cronyism instead of merit. He also wanted to transform Merrill into a trading powerhouse, and to beat [[Goldman Sachs]] at its own game. After the departure of Chris Ricciardi, O'Neal hired [[Osman Semerci]] on the advice of fixed-income head Dow Kim and chief administrative officer Ahmass Fakahany. Semerci continued the push into the subprime mortgage-backed CDO market, and grew the firm's position from $5 to $6 billion worth of exposure to $55 billion in under one year, while firing respected trader Jeff Kronthal and demoting risk manager John Breit, both of whom had warned against too much exposure to CDOs. Merrill was one of the top CDO underwriters of the boom era, a plan that initially brought huge bonuses to Merrill until the markets turned.<ref name=far>Crash of the Titans, Greg Farrelll</ref> According to the then-president of Merrill, Greg Fleming, the dismissal of Kronthal in July 2006 was the day Merrill Lynch’s fate was sealed, otherwise the firm may have "avoided the subprime problems that would soon bring Wall Street to its knees. After that date, Merrill was doomed to make the same mistakes as its competitors."<ref name="vanityfair.com"/>
O'Neal was regarded as out of touch as the market changed and Merrill steered towards trouble, as he had "become isolated from his own firm. He had no idea that key risk managers had been pushed aside or that the people he had put in important positions were out of their depth".<ref name="vanityfair.com"/> O'Neal was described as a manager who "had never been the kind of C.E.O. who walked the trading floor. By 2006, he was so divorced from his own firm that he failed to appreciate the utter lunacy of Semerci’s desire to clean house. Did he really think Semerci could get rid of Merrill’s most experienced mortgage traders and not harm the mortgage desk? Sadly, it seems that O’Neal didn’t think about it at all."<ref name="vanityfair.com"/> "At the same time Goldman executives were canceling vacations to deal with the burgeoning subprime crisis, O’Neal was often on the golf course, playing round after round by himself", in fact six months before [[Bear Stearns]] nearly collapsed Merril added tens of billions of risky securities to its balance sheet while Goldman moved to reduce exposure.<ref name="vanityfair.com"/>
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